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THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 

CONTRIBUTIONS TO 
A PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 



True and False Democracy — Charles Scribner's Sons 
(First Edition, The Macmillan Co., 1907) — xii + 
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ment ? — Charles Scribner's Sons, 1912 — xv + 
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1913 — x + 121 pp. .... $1.00 



THE 
MEANING OF EDUCATION 

CONTRIBUTIONS TO 
A PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 



BY 
NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER 

PRESIDENT OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 
MEMBER OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS AND LETTERS 



REVISED AND ENLARGED EDITION 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1915 






6 



Copyright, 1915, by 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 



Published November, 1915 




lA *14790 l^fii,-; 1 



TO ALL THOSE MEMBERS OF COLUMBIA 
UNIVERSITY, PAST AND PRESENT, WHO 
HAVE AIDED IN MAKING IT A CENTRE OF 
ENLIGHTENMENT, OF PRODUCTIVE SCHOL- 
ARSHIP AND OF HUMAN SERVICE AND WHO 
IN SO DOING HAVE MADE PLAIN THE MEAN- 
ING OF EDUCATION IN A DEMOCRACY 



PUBLISHER'S NOTE 

In the present revised and enlarged edition 
of The Meaning of Education, two chapters that 
were included in the former edition (1898) 
are omitted: "Democracy and Education" 
and "The Reform of Secondary Education in 
the United States." 

The following chapters, which did not ap- 
pear in the former edition, are included in the 
revised and enlarged edition: "Five Evidences 
of an Education''; "Training for Vocation and 
for Avocation"; "Standards"; "Waste in 
Education"; "The Conduct of the Kindergar- 
ten"; i Religious Instruction and Its Relation 
to Education"; "The Scope and Function of 
Secondary Education"; The Secondary School 
Programme"; "The American College and the 
American University"; "The Place of Come- 
nius in the History of Education"; "Status of 
Education at the Close of the Nineteenth Cen- 
tury"; "Some Fundamental Principles of Amer- 
ican Education"; "Education in the United 
States"; "Discipline and the Social Aim in 
Education." 



ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS 



\ 



PAGE 



I Introduction i 

Fundamental assumptions — Distinction between edu- 
cation and instruction — The doctrine of infancy — Will as / 
the fundamental form of the life of mind — Study of edu- 
cation as a science — Education and philosophy — Human 
personality and educational theory. 

II The Meaning of Education ... n 

Relation of evolution to education — Significance of the 
lengthening period of infancy — Relation of infancy to 
education — Infancy as a factor in the development of the 
family and of society — The lengthening period of infancy — 
Education as adjustment to environment — The spiritual 
inheritance of the child — What is education? — The scien- 
tific inheritance — The literary inheritance — The aesthetic 
inheritance — The institutional inheritance — The religious 
inheritance — Infancy and education — The meaning of 
culture. 

III What Knowledge is of Most Worth ? 43 

The complex modern world — Hegel and Herbert Spen- 
cer — The primacy of reflective thought — Philosophy and 
education — Standards of value in knowledge — Knowl- 
edge of the things of the spirit — Humanism — Humanism 
and science — Science as one of the humanities — Two as- 
pects of education — The higher utilities — Professor Tyn- 
dall on science — Character and the moral order — Educa- 
tion as spiritual growth. 

IV Is There a New Education ? . . . 71 

Evolution and education — Study of education as a 
science — The physiological aspect — The psychological 
aspect — Limitations of experience in teaching — The doc- 



CONTENTS 



trines of Herbart: apperception and interest — The 
sociological aspect — Barrier between secondary school 
and college — The broadening of the course of study — 
Attitude of teachers toward the scientific study of edu- 
cation. 



4 V Five Evidences of an Education . . 97 

Who is the educated man? — The quantitative ideal — 
The fivefold spiritual inheritance — Correctness and pre- 
cision in the use of the mother tongue — Refined and gentle 
manners — The habit of reflection — The power to grow — 
The power to do — Five characteristics of the educated 



VI Training for Vocation and for Avoca- 

tion . 117 

Labor and leisure — Hand and eye training — Vocational 
training follows elementary instruction — Special voca- 
tional schools — Vocational training and liberal learn- 
ing — The Oxford training — Discipline and self-discipline. 

VII Standards 131 

Importance of the individual — The setting of stand- 
ards — Standards of personal conduct — Bad habits of 
speech — Lincoln's English — Newspaper English — Influ- 
ence of surroundings on standards — Selfishness versus 
standards — Self-mastery — Self-improvement. 

VIII Waste in Education 149 

Rigid system a cause of waste — How to plan a child's 
education — The system for the child, not the child for 
the system — Thoroughness — Bad teaching — Differences 
between children — Poor educational literature. 



IX The Conduct of the Kindergarten . 163 

/ 

Froebel and Hegel — Is the kindergarten too formal? — 
The kindergarten not a separate institution — The kinder- 
garten and the home — The kindergarten and discipline. 



CONTENTS xi 

PAGE 

X Religious Instruction and Its Rela- 

tion to Education 177 

Education part of the life process — Study of the en- 
vironment — Religious training essential to education — 
Forces separating religious training from education — Is 
the Bible a sectarian book? — The secular schools of France 
— Limitations of the secularized school — The family and 
the church as educational agencies — Religious belief uni- 
versal — Moral and civic instruction no substitute for 
religious teaching — Opportunity of the Sunday-school — 
Effects of ignorance of the Bible — The appeal to the hu- 
man heart. 

XI The Scope and Function of Secondary 

Education 201 

Extent of secondary instruction — What is secondary 
education? — The secondary school programme of study — 
Characteristics of adolescence — Characteristics of second- 
ary-school studies — Passage from elementary to secondary 
instruction — Disciplinary and selective functions of sec- 
ondary instruction — Passage from secondary school to col- 
lege — Overcrowded school programmes — Purpose of flex- 
ible and elective courses. 



XII The Secondary School Programme 227 

Threefold division of instruction — Field of secondary 
education — Effect of college admission examinations — 
Waste in education — Need of better-trained secondary 
teachers — Aim of secondary instruction — Secondary- 
school programmes of study — English — Geography and 
History — Mathematics — 'Natural science — Latin and 
Greek — French and German — Drawing and construc- 
tive work — Physical training — The secondary school and 
life. 

XIII The American College and the 

American University .... 259 

Distinction between college and university — Are there 
American universities ? — Definition of a university — 
The American college — The college population — The col- 
lege programme of study — Higher education in America 



xii CONTENTS 



and in Germany — Teaching and research — The technical 
school in the university — Schools of applied science — 
Schools of law and of medicine — The unity of the true uni- 
versity — Excessive specialization a danger. 



XIV. The Place of Comenius in the His- 
tory of Education 281 

Comenius — State of Europe in 1592 — Educational aim 
of Comenius — His teachers — Comenius an exile — The 
Pansophia — Comenius and Milton — In Sweden and in 
Hungary — The dream of Comenius — Comenius as fore- 
runner of modern ideas — Comenius and Locke — Rous- 
seau — Pestalozzi — Froebel — Comenius and the modern 
movement in education. 



XV. Status of Education at the Close of 

the Nineteenth Century . . . 297 

The centuries — The nineteenth century — Develop- 
ment of the importance of the individual — Growth of 
emphasis on the individual in educational theory — The 
new spirit of freedom — Excesses of individualism — The 
individual and institutions of civilization — Influence of 
the doctrine of evolution — The logical and the psycho- 
logical order — Evolution and individualism — New im- 
portance of education as a government function. 

XVI. Some Fundamental Principles of 

American Education . . . .319 

American education not exclusively a government 
function — Public character of non-tax-supported educa- 
tion — Government and liberty — The three types of Amer- 
ican educational institution — National institutions not 
necessarily governmental — Scope of tax-supported educa- 
tion — Tax-supported education as public service — Daniel 
Webster on taxation for public instruction — Three funda- 
mental principles of American education. 

XVII. Education in the United States . 343 

National government and education — Education a 
State function — Statistics of public education — Illit- 
eracy — Education and crime — Education and industry — 



CONTENTS xiii 



Public secondary education — Local influence of the col- 
lege — American universities — Literature of education- 
Private aid to education — Study of education. 



XVIII. Discipline and the Social Aim of 

Education 365 

Training implies purpose — Form of training determined 
by one's philosophy of life — The common school a prod- 
uct of democracy — Discipline and democracy — The des- 
potism of a majority — Individualism, collectivism, and in- 
stitutionalism — Discipline and personality — Democracy 
and efficiency — Education and the ideal state. 

Index 379 



INTRODUCTION 



INTRODUCTION 

There are two ways of presenting a reasoned 
view of the principles and practise of educa- 
tion. One way is to treat the whole field of 
educational theory and practise in highly sys- 
tematic and logical form. The other and less 
formal way is to present the underlying prin- 
ciples of an educational philosophy, and then 
to apply these principles to various practical 
educational and social problems which have 
present interest and importance. It is this 
second way that has been followed in the pres- 
ent instance. The foundations of an educa- 
tional philosophy are first suggested, and then 
in different ways and from various points of 
view application of this philosophy is made to 
a number of questions which constantly arise 
in the life of the individual, of the school, and 
of the community. 

An empirical education is futile. The only 
education that can serve the state and enrich 
the life of the individual and the family is one 
which rests upon a reasoned and tested founda- 
tion of principle, and which proceeds toward a 

3 



INTRODUCTION 



Fundamental 
assumptions 



Distinction 
between 
education and 
instruction 



clearly defined and well-understood aim. A 
sound education rests upon a sound philos- 
ophy. 

The convictions and opinions on the subject 
of education that are brought together in this 
volume are the result of many years of reflec- 
tion, experience, and observation. Time has 
only served to strengthen the belief that they 
are sound and capable of reasonable defense 
and explanation. 

The belief that controls these convictions and 
opinions is threefold: First, that education, in 
the broad sense in which the term is here used, 
is the most important of human interests, since 
it deals with the preservation of the culture 
and efficiency that we have inherited and with 
their extension and development; second, that 
this human interest can and should be studied 
in a scientific spirit and by a scientific method; 
and, third, that in a democracy at least an 
education is a failure that does not relate it- 
self to the duties and opportunities of citizen- 
ship, with all that that term implies. 

Education is sharply distinguished, there- 
fore, from the far narrower field of instruction, 
as that in turn is broader than the field of 
school life. To give to education its rightful 
place in our thinking involves relating it to the 



INTRODUCTION 5 

laws of life in general, and especially to those The doctrine 
laws as viewed from the standpoint of the doc- of infancy 
trine of evolution. This I have aimed to do 
by proposing an extension of the commonly 
received doctrine of infancy, which though as 
old as early Greek philosophy, 1 owes its defi- 
nite statement and exemplification to Mr. John 
Fiske. 2 In this way the theory of education is 
given what it has hitherto lacked, a distinct 
relationship to the facts of organic and social 
evolution. 

A standard must next be sought by which Will as the 
the value of educational processes and influ- ton ^j^ 
ences may be judged. I find this standard in life of mind 
the conclusion, common, I am confident, to the 
best philosophy and to the soundest science 
alike, that the facts of nature must be ex- 
plained, in the last resort, in terms of energy, 
and that energy in turn can be conceived only 
in terms of will, which is the fundamental 
form of the life of mind or spirit. 

These two conclusions are offered as the basis 
for an educational philosophy. With them in 
mind a number of concrete problems that are 
of present importance not to teachers alone, 

1 Butler, "Anaximander on the Prolongation of Infancy in 
Man," in Classical Studies in Honor of Henry Drisler (New York, 
Columbia University Press, 1894). 

2 See The Meaning of Infancy (Boston, 1909). 



education as 
a science 



6 INTRODUCTION 

but to thoughtful parents and to conscientious 
citizens, are discussed in detail, 
study of It is sometimes hastily objected that the at- 

tempt to formulate a scientific study of educa- 
tion is impossible. This objection rests upon 
a misunderstanding as to what a science is. 
Science is wholly a matter of method; it is 
knowledge classified, and nothing more. The 
knowledge so classified may be knowledge of 
plants, or of heavenly bodies, or of the human 
body, or of forms of government, or of educa- 
tion, or of anything else in the known world 
of relations and related objects. Only the sci- 
ences based upon mathematics are exact or lay 
claim to exactness; all others are descriptive 
only, and wider experience or further observa- 
tion may modify their conclusions at any time. 
A science of education is analogous to a science 
of medicine. Both are built upon a group of 
ancillary sciences, and both arrive at conclu- 
sions that are only working hypotheses. With 
normal children, as with normal patients, these 
hypotheses, based as they are upon wide ex- 
perience, require little or no modification; in 
abnormal cases, however, they must be modi- 
fied or sometimes even abandoned. Neither 
medicine nor education makes any pretense to 
exactness. 



INTRODUCTION 7 

It is highly important for the study of educa- 
tion that a consistent nomenclature be adopted 
and used, though for a variety of reasons this 
is a difficult task to accomplish. Bearing in 
mind this need, I have endeavored to mark ofF 
different types or grades of educational insti- 
tutions from each other, and to give to each its 
appropriate name. Many American educa- 
tional problems that appear very complex 
would become much simpler if the various in- 
stitutions giving systematic instruction were 
always called each by its right name. 

The serious student of education must, as Education 
has already been indicated, be a serious stu- p^g^y 
^dent of philosophy as well. In America, phi- 
losophy has been for some time past in a par- 
J lous state. A generation arose that knew not 
I philosophy, but that was very desirous of con- 
tinuing to use the name. In various forms and 
with varying degrees of vigor, philosophy has 
been repudiated in quasi-philosophical language. 
The intellectual sincerity of the expounders of 
what is called Pragmatism has diverted atten- 
tion from the fact that Pragmatism is not a 
philosophy at all, but rather a denial that 
philosophy can exist. With the title of the 
New Realism, a group of younger writers and 
teachers has thought it worth while to repeat 



8 



INTRODUCTION 



Human 

personality 

and 

educational 

theory 



with no little ingenuity, and to endeavor to 
perpetuate, some of the oldest and most thor- 
oughly exposed of philosophical errors. Both 
these movements are revivals of that dogma- 
tism in philosophy which it was hoped had 
been put to rest forever by the criticism of 
Kant. Whenever a philosophical writer or 
teacher attempts to build up a system of phi- 
losophy without a foundation which rests upon 
a critical analysis of the process of knowing — 
what the Germans call Erkenntnisstheorie — it 
may be assumed at once that he is not con- 
tributing to philosophy, but rather attacking it 
with the weapons of dogmatism. Similarly, all 
undertakings that have for their purpose the 
application of scientific method to philosophy 
are themselves proof that the gulf which sepa- 
rates science and philosophy is neither under- 
stood nor measured. 1 To speak of extending 
scientific method to philosophy is just as little 
intelligible as it would be to speak of extending 
the metric system to political theory. 

The dignity and worth of human personality 
lie at the basis of all constructive theories of 
education, as they lie at the basis of all con- 
structive theories of social and political organi- 



1 See Butler, Philosophy (Columbia University Press, 191 1), 
pp. 12-24. 



INTRODUCTION 9 

zation and action. The development, the pro- 
tection, and the enrichment of human personal- 
ities are alike the purpose of education and of 
those larger relationships and interdependences 
which constitute the state. 

In a very real sense, formal education may 
be described as the process by which the pres- 
ent uses the lessons and the experience of the 
past to aid in meeting the needs and solving 
the problems of the immediate future. Edu- 
cation is by its very nature forward-facing. It 
aims to prepare human beings for life. The 
measure of its success will always be the under- 
standing which it has of the terms, human 
being and life. 

Nicholas Murray Butler 

Columbia University, New York, 
November 25, 191 5 



II 

THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 



An address before the Liberal Club of Buffalo, New York, 
November 19, 1896 



THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 

Those who have an acquaintance, however 
cursory, with the history of human thought 
well remember how bitter and how persistent 
have been the controversies of philosophers and 
metaphysicians in respect to terms of every-day 
use. Discussions on such familiar words as 
substance, cause, idea, and matter have shaken 
the schools for ages. It seems to be a fact that 
when a term is somewhat unusual and remote 
from our experience and our interest, we are 
apt readily to be able to assign to it a definite 
significance and a concrete meaning; but when 
it is a term with which we are familiar in our 
every-day experience and conversation, we often 
feel its significance and its import, and yet find 
great difficult}' in defining it accurately in 
logical or in scientific terms. 

I shall discuss the meaning of Infancy and Relation of 
Education just because the terms are familiar, e ™ lut j° nt0 

7 education 

because the ideas are commonplace, and be- 
cause, as it seems to me, we so often fail to 
grasp their profound and far-reaching signifi- 
cance. The point of view from which I shall 

13 



14 



THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 



Significance 
of the 

lengthening 
period of 
infancy 



speak of them is the one given us by that re- 
markable generalization which has come to be 
known as the doctrine of evolution, a theory 
which we all associate with the nineteenth cen- 
tury, but which, nevertheless, was seen by the 
thinkers of the ancient world, by the lightning 
flashes of their genius, in what is after all very 
much the form in which the clear sunlight of 
modern scientific demonstration presents it to 
us. The doctrine of evolution has illuminated 
every problem of human thought and human 
action. It is a mere truism to say that it has 
revolutionized our thinking; but it is equally 
true that we have in very many cases failed to 
accept the consequences of the revolution and 
to understand them in all their important ap- 
plications. It seems to me that in no depart- 
ment of our interest and activity is this failure 
more complete, speaking generally, than in that 
which relates to the great human institution of 
education. 

The two chief contributions that light up 
this doctrine from the point of view that I wish 
to occupy are those that were made by Mr. 
Alfred Russell Wallace and by Mr. John 
Fiske. It was Mr. Wallace who pointed out, 1 



1 See Natural Selection and Tropical Nature (London, 1891), 
pp. 167-214. 



THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 15 

forty odd years ago, that the theory of evolu- 
tion as applied to man could sustain itself only 
if it were acknowledged and admitted that 
there came a time in the history of animal 
types and forms when natural selection seized 
upon psychical or mental peculiarities and ad- 
vantages and perpetuated them rather than 
merely physical peculiarities and advantages. 
That is the first and in a sense, perhaps, the 
greater of these contributions, for it has enabled 
us to understand the place of man in the order 
of the cosmos. Then, in less than a generation, 
the remarkable insight of Mr. John Fiske ex- 
plained for us on physiological and psycho- 
logical grounds the part played by the length- 
ening period of infancy in the animal species. 1 
It is from that doctrine of Mr. Fiske that I 
take my point of departure in the present argu- 
ment. 

We have come to understand that evolution 
regards us all as individual centres of activity, 
influenced by our surroundings and reacting 
upon them. We have come to understand that 
our physical, our mental, and our moral life is 
the gradual growth or development of what 
may be conceived of as a point travelling 
through an ever-widening series of circles, un- 

1 See The Meaning of Infancy (Boston, 1909). 



1 6 THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 

til, in this ripe and cultivated age, the point has 
come to include within the circumference that 
it traces all that we call the knowledge or ac- 
quirement or culture of the educated man. 

The doctrine of infancy, as it has been ex- 
plained to us, relates itself directly to that fig- 
ure and to that method of explanation. If we 
contrast or compare the lower orders of animal 
life with the higher, and particularly with the 
human species, we are at once struck by the 
fact that in the lower orders of existence there 
is no such thing as infancy. We observe that 
the young are brought into the world able to 
take care of themselves, to react upon their 
environment at the mere contact of air or food, 
to breathe, to digest, and to live an individual 
existence. We are further struck by the fact, 
on examining the structure of animals of that 
kind, that there is no nervous system or or- 
ganization present, except such as is necessary 
to carry on what are called reflex actions. 
There is no central storage warehouse; there 
is nothing corresponding to the human brain; 
and there is no action possible for animals of 
that type in which any considerable time can 
elapse between the impulse which comes in 
from the world without and the responding or 
reacting movement or action on the part of the 



TEE MEANING OF EDUCATION 17 

animal itself. Each of those animals lives the 
life of its parents. Each of those animals, 
young and old alike, performs certain reflex 
actions with accuracy, with sureness, with 
despatch; no one of those animals progresses, 
and none develops or has a history. When we 
pass to animals of a higher order, however, 
there comes a time when our attention is at- 
tracted by those that act in an entirely different 
way. Their actions are more complex, more 
numerous, more subtle, more sustained; and, 
on turning again to the organism that accom- 
panies this and makes it possible, we see at 
once that there is an increased complexity of 
structure which accompanies this increasing 
complexity of function. We find, as we study 
more highly organized types of animal exist- 
ence, that, sooner or later, there comes a time 
when the offspring of a given animal comes into 
the world unable to perform many of the func- 
tions that become possible for it later. It 
brings with it a host of developed reflex actions, 
but it also brings with it many undeveloped 
potentialities. Its organization is not complete 
at the moment of birth; and a period of help- 
lessness or infancy, longer or shorter, must re- 
sult. In passing from the highest of the lower 
animals to man, we reach a most important 



i8 



THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 



Relation of 
infancy to 
education 



stage in the development of infancy. In man 
we find the increasing bulk, and more than that, 
the increasing complexity, of the brain and 
central nervous system which accompany the 
complex adjustments and actions that make up 
life. But though the human animal is born 
into the world complete as to certain series of 
reflex actions, its lungs able to breathe, its 
heart to beat, its blood-vessels to contract, its 
glands to secrete, an immense series of adjust- 
ments remains to be made. While those ad- 
justments are being made, there is a more or 
less prolonged period of helplessness or infancy. 
The meaning of that period of helplessness 
or infancy lies at the bottom of any scientific 
and philosophical understanding of the part 
played by education in human life. Infancy 
is a period of plasticity; it is a period of ad- 
justment; it is a period of fitting the organism 
to its environment: first, physical adjustment, 
and then adjustment on a far larger and broader 
scale. This fitting of the organism to its en- 
vironment on the larger and broader scale is 
the field of education. In other words, nature 
and heredity have so organized one side of 
animal life that it is complete at the time of 
birth. A large series of adjustments to the 
world around us, the series of adjustments 



TEE MEANING OF EDUCATION 19 

that in the case of man make up the life that 
is really worth living, constitutes the life of the 
mind or spirit. At birth, those adjustments 
are not yet made and they have to be slowly 
and carefully acquired. We are even born into 
the world with our senses, "the windows of 
the soul," locked, uncoordinated, unadjusted, 
unable to perform what is eventually to be 
their function. It is a familiar fact that sight, 
hearing, and touch all have to be developed 
and trained and coeducated, taught to act to- 
gether, before the infant can appreciate and 
understand the world of three dimensions in 
which adults live, and which they have sup- 
posed to be the only world known to the human 
consciousness. While that period of plasticity 
or adjustment lasts, there is naturally and 
necessarily a vast influence exerted, not only 
on the child but by the child. 

Mr. Fiske is undeniably correct in saying infancy as a 
that the prolonged period of infancy which is ^evdo^nt 
necessary to bring about these adjustments of the family 
lies at the foundation of the human family, an socie y 
and therefore at the foundation of society and 
of institutional life. The factor in history 
that has changed the human being from a gre- 
garious animal to a man living in a monogamic 
family is, if anthropology and psychology teach 



20 THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 

us anything, unquestionably the child. Dur- 
ing this long period of helplessness and de- 
pendence, the parents of the child are kept 
together by a common centre of interest; and 
the bonds of affection and interdependence that 
are eventually to constitute the family are 
then permanently and closely knit. That 
period of mutual association and dependence 
of the parents extends at first over only eight, 
ten, or twelve years. If two, three, or four 
children are born to the same parents, it may 
extend over a period much longer; it may last 
during one-third or even one-half of the aver- 
age life of man. Out of that centre of depen- 
dence and helplessness, the family, as we know 
it, has grown; and it has been constituted, so 
far as we can explain it at all, by the lengthen- 
ing period of infancy in the animal kingdom 
and in the human race. Fact after fact might 
be cited in illustration of this, from the history 
of science and from natural history, were it 
not wholly unnecessary. It is one of the most 
profound generalizations of our modern sci- 
ence; and it has enabled us to see to the very 
bottom of the meaning of education and to 
understand the biological significance of one 
of the most striking and imposing of social 
phenomena. 



TEE MEANING OF EDUCATION 21 

This lengthening period of infancy is a The 
period of plasticity. No animal that has not e ^^ e ^ ng 
a period of infancy needs to be educated, infancy 
Every animal that has a period of infancy can 
and must be educated. The longer the period 
of infancy the more education is possible for 
it; and as our civilization has become more 
complex, as its products have become more 
numerous, richer, deeper, and more far-reach- 
ing, the longer we have extended that period 
of tutelage, until now, while the physiological 
period of adolescence is reached in perhaps 
fourteen or fifteen years, the educational period 
of dependence is almost twice as long. That 
is to say, the length of time that it takes for 
the human child in this generation so to adapt 
himself to his surroundings as to be able to 
succeed in them, to conquer them, and to make 
them his own, is almost, if not quite, thirty 
years. The education in the kindergarten, the 
elementary school, the secondary school, the 
college, the professional school, the period of 
apprenticeship in the profession before inde- 
pendent practise can be entered upon, is in not 
a few cases, now twenty -five, twenty -six, 
twenty-eight, or even thirty years. 

The rich suggestion that this doctrine of Mr. 
Fiske and this conception of modern science 



22 THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 

Education as have for us, seems to me to be this: The en- 
adjustment to t j fe e d uca tional period after the physical ad- 

environment r r J 

justment has been made, after the child can 
walk alone, can feed itself, can use its hands, 
and has therefore acquired physical and bodily 
independence, is an adjustment to what may 
be called our spiritual environment. After 
the physical adjustment is reasonably complete, 
there remains yet to be accomplished the build- 
ing of harmonious and reciprocal relations with 
those great acquisitions of the race that con- 
stitute civilization; and therefore the length- 
ening period of infancy simply means that we 
are spending nearly half of the life of each 
generation in order to develop in the young 
some conception of the vast acquirements of 
the historic past and some mastery of the con- 
ditions of the immediate present. 

In other words, the doctrine of evolution 
teaches us to look upon the world around us 
— our art, our science, our literature, our insti- 
tutions, and our religious life — as an integral 
part, indeed as the essential part, of our en- 
vironment; and it teaches us to look upon 
education as the plastic period of adapting and 
adjusting our self-active organism to this vast 
series of hereditary acquisitions. So that while 
the child's first right and first duty are to ad- 



THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 23 

just himself physiologically to his environment, 
to learn to walk, to use his hands and to feed 
himself, to be physically independent, there still 
remains the great outer circle of education or 
culture, without contact with which no human 
being is really either man or woman. The 
child receives first, and in a short series of 
years, his animal inheritance; it then remains 
for us in the period of education to see to it 
that he comes into his human inheritance. 
When we compare the life of the lower animal, 
acting solely and entirely by reflex action and 
instinct, with the periods of infancy and of 
self-determined activity of the human being, 
developing by reflex action, instinct, and intelli- 
gence, we get some conception of the vast dif- 
ference there is between what Descartes called 
the animal mechanism and what we may truly - 
look upon as the activity of the human mind. 
This period of adjustment constitutes, then, 
the period of education; and this period of ad- 
justment must, as it seems to me, give us the 
basis for all educational theory and all educa- 
tional practise. It must be the point of de- 
parture in that theory and that practise, and 
it must at the same time provide us with our 
ideals. When we hear it sometimes said, "All 
education must start from the child," we must 



24 TEE MEANING OF EDUCATION 

add, "Yes, and lead into human civilization"; 
and when we hear it said, on the other hand, 
that all education must start from the tradi- 
tional past, we must add: "Yes, and be adapted 
to the child." We shall then understand how 
the great educational systems of modern times, 
upon which every civilized nation is pouring 
out its strength and its treasure, rest upon the 
two corner-stones of the physical and psychical 
nature of the child and the traditional and 
hereditary civilization of the race; and how it 
is that the problem of the family, of the school, 
and of the home, is to unite those two elements 
so that each shall enter into and possess the 
other. We shall then have a conception of 
education which is in accord with the doctrine 
of evolution and which is in accord with the 
teachings of modern science and of modern 
philosophy. 
The spiritual After the child comes into the enjoyment of 
the e C hnd Ce ° f nis P n y sical inheritance, he must be led by the 
family, the school, and the state into his in- 
tellectual or spiritual inheritance. The mo- 
ment that fact is stated in those terms it be- 
comes absolutely impossible for us ever again 
to identify education with mere instruction. 
It becomes absolutely impossible for us any 
longer to identify education with mere acqui- 



THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 25 

sition of learning; and we begin to look upon 
it as really the vestibule of the highest and the 
richest type of living. It was the seed-thought 
of Plato, that inspired every word he ever 
wrote, and that constitutes an important por- 
tion of his legacy to future ages, that life and 
philosophy are identical; but he used the word 
philosophy in a sense which was familiar to 
him and to his time, and for which we might 
very well substitute, under some of its phases 
at least, the word education. Life and educa- 
tion are identical, because the period to which 
we traditionally confine the latter term is 
merely the period of more formal, definite, 
determinate adjustment; yet, just so long as 
life lasts and our impressionability and plas- 
ticity remain, we are always adapting ourselves 
to this environment, gaining power, like An- 
taeus of old, each time we touch the Mother 
Earth from which civilization springs. 

If education cannot be identified with mere What is 
instruction, what is it? What does the term education? 
mean ? I answer, it must mean a gradual ad- 
justment to the spiritual possessions of the 
race, with a view to realizing one's own po- 
tentialities and to assisting in carrying forward 
that complex of ideas, acts, and institutions 
which we call civilization. Those spiritual 



scientific 
inheritance 



26 THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 

possessions may be variously classified, but 
they certainly are at least fivefold. The child 
is entitled to his scientific inheritance, to his 
literary inheritance, to his aesthetic inheri- 
tance, to his institutional inheritance, and to 
his religious inheritance. Without them all he 
cannot become a truly educated or a truly 
cultivated man. 
The He is entitled to his scientific inheritance. 

In other words, he is entitled to go out into 
nature, to love it, to come to know it, to un- 
derstand it; and he is entitled to go out into 
it, not only as the early Greek and Oriental 
thinkers went, with fear and trembling and 
worship, but he is entitled to go out into it 
armed with all the resources of modern scien- 
tific method and all the facts acquired by 
modern research. He is entitled to know how 
it was that we have passed from the world 
known to the heroes of the Iliad to the world 
as we know it to-day. He is entitled to know 
how the heavens have declared their glory to 
man, and how the worlds of plant and animal 
and rock have all come to unfold the story of 
the past and to enrich us with the thought and 
the suggestion of the intelligence, the design, 
the order that they manifest. There can be 
no sound and liberal education that is not 



TEE MEANING OF EDUCATION 27 

based in part upon the scientific inheritance of 
the race. The learning of the multiplication 
table, the learning of the necessary preliminary 
definitions, the learning of the necessary meth- 
ods of research and practise — all these are 
the lower steps of the ladder, the needful steps 
by which we must mount; and yet they are 
the steps from which how often we fall back 
without having gained any vision whatever of 
the land to which they are supposed to lead ! 
The scientific inheritance is one of the very first 
elements of a modern liberal education, because 
it is that element which presents itself earliest 
to the senses of the child. It is the element 
with which he comes in immediate sense-con- 
tact; to which he can be first led; from which 
he may be made to understand and draw 
lessons of the deepest significance for his life 
and for that adaptation which is his education. 

Next there is the vast literary inheritance, The literary 
the phase of the past that mankind has during inhentance 
twenty-five hundred years most loved to dwell 
upon. It is the side that has captivated the 
imagination, enshrined itself in language, and 
brought itself closest to the heart of cultivated 
man — going back to . the earliest attempts at 
mythology and coming down to the great 
poetry and the great prose of the eighteenth 



28 THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 

and nineteenth centuries in modern tongues. 
We have gone so far as to call this aspect of 
civilization the "humanities/' because most of 
all it seems to bear upon its surface the sig- 
nificance of that fine old word humanitas which 
was once the ideal of liberal education. "Hu- 
manities" these studies undoubtedly are, but 
humanitas is a broader term still, and in its 
full significance must be made to include all 
our inheritance, scientific, aesthetic, institu- 
tional, and religious, as well as literary. 

Just as scientific method is the gate to the 
scientific inheritance and therefore must in 
essence at least be mastered, so language is the 
gate to the literary inheritance and must be 
mastered at the earliest opportunity. We are 
accustomed, as a rule, to estimate and to weigh 
power and culture in terms of language. The 
mastery of various languages, the mastery even 
of the mother tongue, is often taken as the sole 
test of culture. That is our tribute to its great 
importance. We see how easily the mastery 
of a language, or of more than one, lends it- 
self to this conception of education as an 
adaptation, as an adjustment, to the spiritual 
environment of the race. 

Language is the crystallization of past 
thought. It contains in itself, in its products 



THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 29 

and its forms, in its delicate discriminations, 
its powers of comparison and abstraction, a 
record of the progress of the thought of the 
race. When we are plodding through dreary 
details of grammar and of rhetoric we are 
again on the lower rungs of the ladder, the 
multiplication table of the literary inheritance, 
the steps that must be taken if we are to come 
to understand what the great world-poets and 
seers have revealed to us. Therefore it is that 
we are to-day putting the literary inheritance 
side by side with the scientific in the very 
earliest years of the education of the child. 
In the education that is sometimes called new, 
it will be found that the early linguistic exer- 
cises are almost always based upon something 
that is really worth knowing for its own sake. 
Our literatures the world over, ancient and 
modern, are so rich, so full of thought and feel- 
ing and action, that there is no time to waste 
in the merely formal exercises of grammatical 
drill upon lifeless material, when we may be 
occupying ourselves, in those same exercises 
and for the same purpose of discipline, with 
material that enriches the human mind and 
touches and refines the human heart. Modern 
education in its adjustments is bringing the 
child into his literary inheritance in a new 



30 THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 

spirit. That inheritance has always been be- 
fore mankind. In the Middle Ages, in early- 
modern education, in European education to- 
day, the study of language and literature is 
and has been the main element in instruction. 
It must always hold a prominent place in edu- 
cation, for it admits of no substitute. Yet it 
is mere narrowness to say that this study alone 
is sufficient, and that it excludes everything 
else. It should come side by side with the sci- 
entific inheritance in the early life of the child, 
during the period of plasticity or education. 
The The third element in education is the aes- 

thetic inheritance, that feeling for the beauti- 
ful, the picturesque, and the sublime that has 
always been so great a part of human life, 
that contributes so much to human pleasure 
and accentuates so much of human pain and 
suffering. The ancient Greeks understood and 
used it, but a false and narrowing philosophy 
thrust it out of life and education for centuries 
because it was supposed to antagonize the spiri- 
tual or religious life. It was believed that the 
spirit could be chastened only by privation 
and by pain, by tearing it away from one 
whole side of human civilization, and by in- 
sisting that the human heart should suppress 
its feeling, its longing for the ideal in the realm 



aesthetic 
inheritance 



TEE MEANING OF EDUCATION 31 

of feeling and of beauty. The closet phi- 
losophers could accomplish their end in educa- 
tion for a time, but they were utterly unable 
to suppress the builders of the Gothic cathe- 
drals or the Italian painters of the Renaissance, 
and they have been unable to suppress the 
artistic element in human life. To-day we 
find it coming back to occupy its appropriate 
place. We should no longer think of applying 
the word cultivated to a man or woman who 
had no aesthetic sense, no feeling for the beau- 
tiful, no appreciation of the sublime, because 
we should be justified in saying, on all psy- 
chological grounds, that that nature was defi- 
cient and defective. This great aspect of 
civilization, this great tide of feeling that ebbs 
and flows in every human breast, which makes 
even the dull and inappreciative peasant un- 
cover his head as he passes through the won- 
derful galleries of the Vatican or the Louvre 
— this, too, is a necessary factor in adjusting 
ourselves to the full richness of human con- 
quest and human acquisition. Unless we are 
to be mere hewers of wood and drawers of 
water, we should see to it that the aesthetic 
inheritance is placed side by side with the sci- 
entific and the literary in the education of the 
human child. To-day we find art creeping 



32 THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 

into the schoolroom; instruction in color, in 
form, in expression is being given. The grow- 
ing child is surrounded with representations of 
the classic in art, and so, unconsciously and by 
imitation, he is being taught to adapt and ad- 
just himself to this once forgotten and now 
recovered element in human civilization; an 
element that certainly is, like the scientific and 
literary elements, an integral part of the 
child's inheritance. 
The Then there is also the wonderful institu- 

inheritance tional inheritance, perhaps the most wonder- 
ful of all, because it brings us into immediate 
contact with the human race itself. This is 
the element of civilization before which we 
must, for the moment, sink differences of sci- 
entific opinion, differences of literary appre- 
ciation, differences of aesthetic judgment, and 
by which we look upon the individual man 
as but a member of a larger whole, in order 
to understand what human civilization really 
means. We have always had before us, in the 
history of civilization, two extreme types of 
thought and opinion as to human institutions. 
We have had the view typified in modern phi- 
losophy by Rousseau, and wrought out in the 
streets of Paris from 1789 to 1794. This is, 
substantially, the view that every individual 



THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 33 

is sufficient unto himself. It is the view of the 
ancient Sophists, once combated by Socrates 
in the streets of Athens, that there are as many 
truths as there are men to perceive truth, and 
that each individual is the sole arbiter of his 
own fortunes. This is what may be called the 
atomic view of human society, which would 
blow all of our institutional life into millions 
of atoms and deify each. That view has failed 
to work itself out successfully in history; when 
it has had a momentary victory it has simply 
been because it came as a reaction against the 
tyranny of the opposite extreme. We have 
had the other extreme also. We have had the 
view which insists that no individual is of any 
consequence or importance in the presence of 
the mass; the view that all individual peculi- 
arity, all individual power or acquisition, must 
be pressed down and trampled under foot for 
the advantage of the whole. We have seen it 
in the civilization of China in the interest of 
ancestor worship; we have seen it in the civili- 
zation of India in the interest of the caste sys- 
tem; we have seen it in the civilization of 
Egypt in the interest of the priestly class; and 
we have seen those three civilizations wither 
and die. 

We have come to understand, again follow- 



34 TEE MEANING OF EDUCATION 

ing the seed-thought of the Greeks, that the 
true line of institutional progress lies between 
the two extremes; that that conception of our 
institutional life is the true one which regards 
each of us as a unit but still as a part of a 
larger unit, which regards each of us as en- 
titled to liberty but in subordination to law. 
We have come to regard this as the last lesson 
of a political philosophy that is based upon a 
study of human history and of human nature. 
The conception of liberty under the law, allow- 
ing a field for every human activity to develop 
and enrich itself without pulling down its fel- 
low, all co-operating toward a common end, 
typifies and explains, better than any extreme 
theory of philosopher or sciolist, the institu- 
tional life of the race. We look back and see 
how that institutional life has been developed. 
We see the right of private property, the com- 
mon law, the state, the church, the freedom of 
the press, education, — one great institution 
after another emerging from the mist of indef- 
initeness and taking its part in the structure 
of our modern life; and we say at once that 
no liberal education can be complete that does 
not include some comprehension of all that. 
Unless the child understands that, though he 
is an individual he is also a member of the 



THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 35 

body politic, of an institutional life in which > 
he must give and take, defer and obey, adjust 
and correlate, sympathize and co-operate, and 
that without all this there can be no civiliza- 
tion and no progress, we are thrown back into 
a condition either of anarchy — the anarchy of 
Rousseau — or of the collectivism and stagna- 
tion of China, India, and Egypt. We have 
wrested that institutional life from history, 
and it is going to-day into the education of 
children all over the civilized world. In this 
way they are being given their institutional in- 
heritance; they are being given some insight 
not alone into their rights, which are so easy 
to teach, but into their duties, which are so 
easy to forget; and the institutional life that 
carries with it lessons of duty, responsibility, 
and the necessity for co-operation in the work- 
ing out of high ideals, as well as appreciation 
of men's collective responsibilities, is now being 
put before children wherever sound education 
is given, from the kindergarten to the uni- 
versity. 

Finally, there is the religious inheritance of The religious 
the child. No student of history can doubt '^^^^ 
its existence and no observer of human nature 
will undervalue its significance. We are still 
far from comprehending fully the preponder- 



36 TEE MEANING OF EDUCATION 

ant influence of religion in shaping our con- 
temporary civilization; an influence that is 
due in part to the universality of religion it- 
self, and in part to the fact that it was, beyond 
dispute, the chief human interest at the time 
when the foundations of our present super- 
structure were being laid. It has played a 
controlling part in education till very recently, 
although it has too often played that part in 
a narrow, illiberal, and uninformed spirit. 
The progress of events during the nineteenth 
century, however, has resulted in greatly alter- 
ing the relation of the religious influence in 
education — at first to education's incalculable 
gain, and, more recently, to education's dis- 
tinct loss. The growing tendency toward what 
is known as the separation of church and state, 
but what is more accurately described as the 
independence of man's political and religious 
relationships, and, concurrently, the develop- 
ment of a public educational conscience which 
has led the state to take upon itself a large 
share of the responsibility for education, have 
brought about the practical exclusion of the 
religious element from public education. This 
is notably true in France and in the United 
States. In the state school system of France, 
all trace of religious instruction has been lack- 



THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 37 

ing since 1882; and it is hard to dignify with 
the names influence or instruction the wretch- 
edly formal religious exercises that are gone 
through with in American public schools. 

The result of this condition of affairs is that 
religious teaching is rapidly passing out of edu- 
cation entirely; and the familiarity with the 
English Bible as the greatest classic of our 
tongue, that every cultivated man owes it to 
himself to possess, is becoming a thing of the 
past. Two solutions of the difficulty are pro- 
posed. One is that the state shall tolerate all 
existing forms of religious teaching in its own 
schools, time being set apart for the purpose. 
The other is that the state shall aid, by money 
grants, schools maintained by religious or other 
corporations. Neither suggestion is likely to 
be received favorably by the American people 
at present, because of the bitterness of the war 
between the denominational theologies. Yet 
the religious element may not be permitted to 
pass wholly out of education unless we are to 
cripple it and render it hopelessly incomplete. 
It must devolve upon the family and the church, 
then, to give this instruction to the child and 
to preserve the religious insight from loss. 
Both family and church must become much 
more efficient, educationally speaking, than 



38 THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 

they are now, if they are to bear this burden 
successfully. This opens a series of questions 
that may not be entered upon here. It is 
enough to point out that the religious element 
of human culture is essential; and that, by 
some effective agency, it must be presented to 
every child whose education aims at complete- 
ness or proportion. 1 

infancy and The period of infancy is to be used by civi- 

lized men for adaptation along these five lines, 
in order to introduce the child to his intellectual 
and spiritual inheritance, just as the shorter 
period of infancy in the lower animals is used 
to develop, to adjust, and to co-ordinate those 
physical actions which constitute the higher in- 
stincts, and which require the larger, the more 
deeply furrowed, and the more complex brain. 
With this adaptation to the intellectual and 
spiritual inheritance of the child there must 
go, of course, such physical training and such 
systematic care for his health as will serve to 
provide a sufficient and satisfactory physical 
foundation for a happy and useful intellectual 
and spiritual life. 

That, as it seems to me, is the lesson of bi- 
ology, of physiology, and of psychology, on the 
basis of the theory of evolution, regarding the 

1 See pp. 179-200. 



THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 39 

meaning and the place of education in modern 
life. It gives us a conception of education 
which must, I am quite sure, raise it above 
the mechanical, the routine, the purely arti- 
ficial. We see that this period of preparation 
is not a period of haphazard action, a period 
of possible neglect, or a period when time may 
be frittered away and lost, but that every mo- 
ment of adjustment is precious and that every 
new adaptation and correlation is an enrich- 
ment not only of the life of the individual but 
of the life of the race. For now we all under- 
stand perfectly well that this long period of 
infancy and adaptation, this period of plas- 
ticity and education, is that which makes 
progress possible. That is why it is entirely 
correct to say that each generation is the trus- 
tee of civilization. Each generation owes it 
to itself and to its posterity to protect its cul- 
ture, to enrich it, and to transmit it. The in- 
stitution that mankind has worked out for that 
purpose is the institution known as education. 
When a child has entered into this inheritance, 
first physical, then scientific, literary, aesthetic, 
institutional, and religious, then we may use 
the word culture 1 to signify the state that has 
been attained. 

1 In the German language the word Kultur is given a quite 
different meaning. The nearest German equivalent to culture as 
here used is Bildung. 



40 THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 

The meaning The word culture is very modern. It is 
o cuture used in its present sense only during the latter 
portion of the eighteenth century and during 
our own. It owes its present significance 
largely to Goethe and to Herder, the two men 
who did most to make it familiar in its modern 
sense. But while the word may be new, the 
conception itself is old. It is the iraiSefa of 
the Greeks, the humanitas of the Romans; 
and after all it expresses pretty much what 
the patrician Roman, dwelling in his country 
house, had in mind when he sent his boy, after 
giving him some instruction in agriculture, in 
law, and in military duty, to the great city of 
Rome itself in order to obtain urbanitas, city- 
ness. We have softened that word down until 
it means merely polished manner, but when the 
Romans first used it they meant by it pretty 
much what we mean by culture. The concep- 
tion of culture is old, therefore; it has always 
been before the idealists of the human race 
from the earliest times. We have given to 
this new word rich, full, and diversified mean- 
ing, based, as I say, upon the knowledge of the 
child and upon the knowledge of the historic 
past. When we use it in that sense, we are 
using it, as we may properly, to indicate the 
ideal of our modern education. 



THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 41 

Adaptation to the intellectual and spiritual 
environment, the attainment of true culture, 
is not an end in itself, but a necessary prepara- 
tion for the realization of one's own person- 
ality, and for rendering the highest and best 
type of service to mankind. The intellectual 
and spiritual environment is not to be con- 
ceived of as something fixed and complete, but 
rather as something growing and alive, to which 
it is in the power of every human being to make 
some addition, however trifling. These addi- 
tions are the material of true progress. The J^ 
purpose of education is to provide the largest 
possible number of human beings with that 
genuine culture which will enable them to un- 
derstand the meaning of progress and to con- 
tribute to it. This progress may take any 
one of a myriad forms. It may be faithfulness 
in inconspicuous labor, it may be a new and 
striking product of handiwork, it may be hu- 
man service to one's fellows in any one of a 
thousand ways. Progress based upon culture 
is surely progress; without culture and all that 
the word is here held to signify, progress is 
only an empty word. 



Ill 



WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST 
WORTH ? 



Presidential address before the National Educational 
Association at Denver, Colorado, July 9, 1895 



WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST 
WORTH ? 

The student of history is struck with the 
complexity of modern thought. From the 
dawn of philosophy to the great Revival of 
Learning the lines of development are com- 
paratively simple and direct. During that 
period one may trace, step by step, the evolu- 
tion of the main problems of thought and 
action, and discover readily how the theories 
of the seers stood the test of application by 
the men of deeds. At Athens during the great 
fifth century the inner life was the chief part 
of life itself. In that age of the world life was 
simple; and often, because of its refinement 
and independence, more reflective than with us. 
Men's ideals were more sharply defined and 
more easily realizable. They did not doubt 
that the world existed for them and their en- 
joyment. Even that relatively advanced stage 
of human culture of which Dante is the im- 
mortal exponent, believed, as Mr. John Fiske 
says, 1 that "this earth, the fair home of man, 
was placed in the centre of a universe wherein 

1 The Destiny of Man (Boston, 1887), p. 12. 
45 



46 WHAT KNOWLEDGE 

all things were ordained for his sole behoof: 
the sun to give him light and warmth, the stars 
in their courses to preside over his strangely 
checkered destinies, the winds to blow, the 
floods to rise, or the fiend of pestilence to stalk 
abroad over the land — all for the blessing, or 
the warning, or the chiding, of the chief among 
God's creatures, Man." With such a concep- 
tion as this, theory and practise could be closely 
related. In the ancient world it was not un- 
usual to find the thought of the disciple guided 
implicitly by the maxim of the master. Yv&di 
ceavrov and Nil admirari were preached by 
the early philosophers in the confident belief 
that they could be practised by him who would. 
The complex In these modern days all this is changed. 
Man has come to doubt not only his supremacy 
in the universe, but even his importance. He 
finds that, far from dwelling at the centre of 
things, he is but "the denizen of an obscure 
and tiny speck of cosmical matter quite invisi- 
ble amid the innumerable throng of flaming 
suns that make up our galaxy." A flood of 
new knowledge has appealed to human sym- 
pathy and interest, and has taxed them to the 
utmost. Galileo with his telescope has re- 
vealed to us the infinitely great; and the com- 
pound microscope of Jansen has created, as out 



modern 
world 



IS OF MOST WORTH? 47 

of nothing, the world of the infinitely small. 
Within a generation or two biology has been 
created; and physics, chemistry, and geology 
have been born again. The first wave of as- 
tonishment and delight at these great revela- 
tions has been succeeded by one of perplexity 
and doubt in the presence of the wholly new 
problems that they raise. The old self-assur- 
ance is lost. Men first stumble, blinded by the 
new and unaccustomed light, and then despair. 
The age of the faith and assured conviction of 
Aquinas was followed by the bold and cynical 
scepticism of Montaigne; and this in turn — 
for scepticism has never afforded a resting- 
place for the human spirit for more than a 
moment — has yielded to the philosophy of dis- 
enchantment and despair of a Schopenhauer 
and the morbidly acute and unsatisfying self- 
analysis of an Amiel. Already it is proclaimed 
by Nordau and his school that we are in an age 
of decadence, and that many of our contempo- 
rary interpreters of life and thought — Wagner, 
Tolstoi, Ibsen, Zola, the pre-Raphaelites — are 
fit subjects for an insane ayslum. Mankind is 
divided into warring camps, and while elec- 
tricity and steam have bound the nations of 
the earth together, questions of knowledge and 
of belief have split up every nation into sects. 



Herbert 
Spencer 



48 WHAT KNOWLEDGE 

In all this tumult it is difficult to catch the 
sound of the dominant note. Each suggested 
interpretation seems to lead us further into the 
tangled maze, where we cannot see the wood 
for the trees. Standards of truth are more 
definite than ever before; but standards of 
worth are strangely confused, and at times 
even their existence is denied. 
Hegel and Amid all this confusion, however, a light has 

been growing steadily brighter for those who 
have eyes to see. In our own century two 
great masters of thought have come forward, 
offering, like Ariadne of old, to place in our 
hands the guiding thread that shall lead us 
through the labyrinth — the German Hegel and 
the Englishman Herbert Spencer. And as the 
nineteenth century closes, amid the din of 
other and lesser voices, we seem to hear the 
deeper tones of these two interpreters swelling 
forth as representative of the best and most 
earnest endeavors, from two totally different 
points of view, of human seekers after light. 
Each has taken the whole of knowledge for his 
province, each has spread out before us a con- 
nected view of man and his environment, and 
each would 

"... assert Eternal Providence 
And justify the ways of God to men." 



75 OF MOST WORTH? 49 

These great teachers typify the catholicity and 
the scientific method that are so characteristic 
of the best expressions of our modern civiliza- 
tion. Whatever of insight we have gained 
into history, into philosophy, into art, and into 
nature, they have incorporated in their syste- 
matic thinking and have endeavored to illumine 
with the light of their controlling principles. 
Hegel, schooled in the teachings of Kant and 
of Fichte, and coming early to an appreciation 
of the seed-thought, of Plato and Aristotle, 
Bruno and Spinoza, has taught us in unmis- 
takable language that independent, self-active 
being is the father of all things. Spencer, feel- 
ing the thrill of that unity which makes the 
cosmos one, and receiving from Lamarck and 
Von Baer the hint that led him to see that the 
life of the individual furnishes the clew to the 
understanding of the life of the aggregate, 
whether natural or social, has formulated into 
a single and understandable law of progress 
the terms of that development, or evolution, 
which has been more or less dimly before the 
mind of man since thought began. The Ger- 
man with his principle of self-activity, and the 
Englishman with his law of evolution, offer us 
a foothold for our knowledge and our faith, 
and assure us that it will safely support them. 



5o 



WHAT KNOWLEDGE 



The primacy 
of reflective 
thought 



From the one we learn the eternal reasonable- 
ness of all that is or can be, while the other 
teaches us the character of the process by 
which the visible universe, that every day pre- 
sents new wonders to our gaze, has been 
builded out of the primeval star-dust. At 
their hands the two sublime and awe-inspiring 
verities of Kant — the starry heavens above 
and the moral law within — find their places in 
the life of the spirit, and together testify to 
its eternity and its beauty. 

Despite the fact that our age is one of un- 
exampled scientific and industrial progress, yet 
nothing in all our modern scientific activity is 
more striking than the undisputed primacy of 
thought — thought not in antagonism to sense, 
but interpretative of the data of sense. Ideal- 
ism, shorn of its crudities and its extravagances, 
and based on reason rather than on Berkeley's 
analysis of sense-perception, is conquering the 
world. What Plato saw, Descartes, Leibniz, 
Kant, and Hegel have demonstrated. The 
once-dreaded materialism has lost all its ter- 
rors. Science itself has analyzed matter into 
an aggregate of dynamical systems, and speaks 
of energy in terms of will. The seemingly 
inert stone that we grasp in our hand is in 
reality an aggregate of an infinite number of 



IS OF MOST WORTH? 51 

rapidly moving centres of energy. Our own 
will is the only energy of whose direct action 
we are immediately conscious, and we use our 
experience of it to explain other manifestations 
of energy to ourselves. Modern mathematics, 
that most astounding of intellectual creations, 
has projected the mind's eye through infinite 
time and the mind's hand into boundless space. 
The very instants of the beginnings of the 
sun's eclipses are predicted for centuries and 
aeons to come. Sirius, so distant that the light 
from its surface, travelling at a rate of speed 
that vies with the lightning, requires more 
than eight and one-half years to reach us, is 
weighed, and its constituents are counted al- 
most as accurately as are the bones of our 
bodies. Yet in 1842 Comte declared that it 
was forever impossible to hope to determine 
the chemical composition or the mineralogical 
structure of the stars. An unexpected aberra- 
tion in the motions of Uranus foretold an un- 
discovered planet at a given spot in the sky, 
and the telescope of Galle, turned to that 
precise point, revealed to the astonished senses 
what was certain to thought. But yesterday 
a discrepancy in the weight of nitrogen ex- 
tracted from the air we breathe, led Lord 
Rayleigh, by an inexorable logic, to the dis- 



52 WHAT KNOWLEDGE 

covery of a new atmospheric constituent, argon. 
The analytical geometry of Descartes and the 
calculus of Newton and Leibniz have expanded 
into the marvellous mathematical method — 
more daring in its speculations than anything 
that the history of philosophy records — of Lo- 
bachevsky and Riemann, Gauss and Sylvester. 
Indeed, mathematics, the indispensable tool of 
the sciences, defying the senses to follow its 
splendid flights, is demonstrating to-day, as it 
has never been demonstrated before, the su- 
premacy of the pure reason. The great Cay- 
ley — who has been given the proud title of the 
Darwin of the English school of mathematicians 
— said a few years ago: 1 "I would myself say 
that the purely imaginary objects are the only 
realities, the oVrcos 6Vra, in regard to which 
the corresponding physical objects are as the 
shadows in the cave; and it is only by means 
of them that we are able to deny the existence 
of a corresponding physical object; and if 
there is no conception of straightness, then it 
is meaningless to deny the conception of a 
perfectly straight line." 

The physicist, also, is coming to see that his 
principle of the conservation of energy in its 

1 Presidential address, British Association for the Advance- 
ment of Science, Southport, 1883. 



IS OF MOST WORTH? 53 

various manifestations is a new and startling 
proof of the fundamental philosophical prin- 
ciple of self-activity. Energy manifests itself 
as motion, heat, light, electricity, chemical 
action, sound. Each form of its manifestation 
is transmutable into others. The self-active 
cycle is complete. 

But it is not from the domain of natural sci- 
ence alone that illustrations of the all-conquer- 
ing power of thought can be drawn. The 
genius of Champollion has called to life the 
thoughts and deeds of Amenotep and Rameses; 
and what appeared to sense as rude decorative 
sketches on the walls of temple and of tomb 
are seen by the understanding to be the re- 
corded history of a great civilization in the 
valley of the Nile. The inscrutable Sphinx, 
that watch-dog of the Pyramids, "unchange- 
able in the midst of change," which sat facing 
the coming dawn for centuries before the 
storied siege of Troy, now looks down on mod- 
ern men who write the very words of its build- 
ers in the language of Shakspere and of Milton. 
The cries of savage man, the language-symbols 
of the early Aryans, and the multiform and 
complicated tongues of modern Europe, all so 
seemingly diverse to the ear and to the eye, 
have been the foundation for the sure laws of 



54 WHAT KNOWLEDGE 

comparative philology that the labors of Bopp 
and Grimm and Verner have erected upon 
them. All these, and the many triumphs like 
them, are victories of insight; each marks a 
new stage in the conquering progress of the 
reason, by which it finds itself in every part 
and in every phase of the cosmos and its life. 

The insight as to self-activity and the pri- 
macy of reflective thought, I regard as the 
profoundest that philosophy has to offer; and, 
instead of being urged, as in centuries past, in 
antagonism to the teachings of science, it is 
now becoming the joint conclusion of philosophy 
and science together. It is thought that pul- 
sates in the world's grandest poetry and in 
its most exquisite art. It is the very soul of 
the verse of Homer and of Dante, of Shaks- 
pere and of Goethe. It makes the marble of 
Phidias glow with life, and it guides the hands 
of Raphael and Michael Angelo as they trace 
their wondrous figures with the brush. It gives 
immortality to the most beautiful of temples, 
the Parthenon; and it is the inspiration of that 
superb mediaeval architecture, which bears the 
name of the conquerors of Rome, and which 
has given to Northern Europe its grandest 
monuments to the religious aspiration and 
devotion of the Middle Ages. 



IS OF MOST WORTH? 55 

What, then, does this primacy of thought Philosophy 
signify, and what is its bearing upon our edu- and education 
cational ideals ? Obviously the possession of 
a conclusion such as this, wrested from nature 
by the hand of science and from history by 
that of philosophy, must serve in many ways 
to guide us in estimating the importance of 
human institutions and of educational instru- 
ments. We cannot accept either of these, 
without question, from the hands of a tradition 
to which our modern philosophy and our mod- 
ern science were wholly unknown; nor can we 
blindly follow those believers in a crude psy- 
chology who would present us with so many 
mental faculties to be trained, each by its 
appropriate formal exercise, as if they were 
sticks of wood to be shaped and reduced to 
symmetry and order. Mental life, as Wundt 
so forcibly says, "does not consist in the con- 
nection of unalterable objects and varying 
conditions: in all its phases it is process; an 
active, not a passive, existence; development, 
not stagnation." x Herein is mental life true 
to nature. Like nature, it is not fixed, but 
ever changing, and this unceasing change, 
necessary to both growth and development, 

1 Lectures on Human and Animal Psychology (New York, 1894), 
P. 454- 



56 



WHAT KNOWLEDGE 



Standards of 
value in 
knowledge 



gives to life both its reality and its pathos. 
It also gives to education its unending char- 
acter, and to mankind the clew to education's 
wisest processes. 

The question that I am asking — what knowl- 
edge is of most worth ? — is a very old one, and 
the answers to it which have been handed down 
through the centuries are many and various. 
It is a question which each age must put to 
itself, and answer from the standpoint of its 
deepest and widest knowledge. The wisest 
philosophers have always seen, more or less 
clearly, the far-reaching character of the ques- 
tion and the great importance of the answer. 
Socrates and Plato, Augustine and Aquinas, 
were under no illusions as to it; but often in 
later years the deeper questions relating to 
the relative worth of subjects of study have 
been either entirely lost sight of or very super- 
ficially dealt with. Bacon clothes in attract- 
ive axiomatic form some very crude judgments 
as to the relative worth of studies. Rousseau 
outlines an educational programme that ruined 
his reputation for sobriety of judgment. Her- 
bert Spencer turns aside for a moment from 
his life-work to apotheosize science in educa- 
tion, although science is, by his own defini- 
tion, only partially unified knowledge. Whewell 



IS OF MOST WORTH? 57 

exalts mathematics in language only less 
extravagant than that in which Sir William 
Hamilton decries it. In similar fashion, others, 
holding a brief for some particular phase or 
department of knowledge, have come forward 
crying Eureka ! and proclaiming that the value 
of all studies must be measured in terms of 
their newly discovered standard. The very 
latest cry is that studies and intellectual exer- 
cises are valuable in proportion as they stimu- 
late enlarged brain-areas, thus making the 
appreciation of Shakspere, of Beethoven, and 
of Leonardo da Vinci solely a function of the 
circulation of the blood. 

But to sciolists of this type philosophy and Knowledge 

1 t r • of the things 

science can now make common answer. If it of ^ ..* 
be true that spirit and reason rule the universe, 
then the highest and most enduring knowledge 
is of the things of the spirit. That subtle sense 
of the beautiful and the sublime which accom- 
panies spiritual insight, and is part of it — this 
is the highest achievement of which humanity 
is capable. It is typified, in various forms, in 
the verse of Dante and the prose of Thomas 
a Kempis, in the Sistine Madonna of Raphael, 
and in Mozart's Requiem. To develop this 
sense in education is the task of art and liter- 
ature, to interpret it is the work of philosophy, 



58 WHAT KNOWLEDGE 

and to nourish it the function of religion. 
Because it most fully represents the higher 
nature of man, it is man's highest possession, 
and those studies that directly appeal to it 
and instruct it are beyond compare the most 
valuable. This has been eloquently and beau- 
tifully illustrated by Brother Azarias. "Take a 
Raphael or a Murillo," he says. 1 "We gaze 
upon the painted canvas till its beauty has 
entered our soul. The splendor of the beauty 
lights up within us depths unrevealed, and far 
down in our inner consciousness we discover 
something that responds to the beauty on which 
we have been gazing. It is as though a former 
friend revealed himself to us. There is here a 
recognition. The more careful has been our 
sense-culture, the more delicately have our 
feelings been attuned to respond to a thing of 
beauty and find in it a joy forever, all the 
sooner and the more intensely do we experi- 
ence this recognition. And therewith comes a 
vague yearning, a longing as for something. 
What does it all mean ? The recognition is of 
the ideal." Toward the full recognition and 
appreciation of this insight into the great works 
of the spirit, whether recorded in literature, in 
art, or in institutional life, higher education 

1 Phases of Thought and Criticism (New York, 1892), pp. 57, 58. 



IS OF MOST WORTH? 59 

should bend all its energies. The study of 
philosophy itself, or the truly philosophic study 
of any department of knowledge — however re- 
mote its beginnings may seem to be — will 
accomplish this end. The ways of approach to 
this goal are as many as there are human in- 
terests, for they are all bound together in the 
bonds of a common origin and a common pur- 
pose. The attainment of it is true culture, as 
Matthew Arnold has defined it: "the acquaint- 
ing ourselves with the best that has been 
known and said in the world, and thus with 
the history of the human spirit." x 

We now come in sight of the element of Humanism 
truth and permanence in that Humanism which 
Petrarch and Erasmus spread over Europe 
with such high hopes and excellent intentions; 
but which Sturm, the Strassburg schoolmaster, 
reduced to the dead, mechanical forms and 
the crude verbalism that bound the schools in 
fetters for centuries. Of Humanism itself we 
may say, as Pater says of the Renaissance of 
the fifteenth century, that "it was great rather 
by what it designed than by what it achieved. 
Much which it aspired to do, and did but im- 
perfectly or mistakenly, was accomplished in 
what is called the eclair cissement of the eight- 

1 Preface to Literature and Dogma (New York, 1889), p. xi. 



and science 



60 WHAT KNOWLEDGE 

eenth century, or in our own generation; and 
what really belongs to the revival of the fif- 
teenth century is but the leading instinct, the 
curiosity, the initiatory idea." 1 
Humanism Many of the representative Humanists were 

broad-minded men whose sympathies were with 
learning of every kind. Erasmus himself writes 
with enthusiasm of other branches of knowl- 
edge than literature. "Learning," he says, "is 
springing up all around out of the soil; lan- 
guages, physics, mathematics, each department 
thriving. Even theology is showing signs of 
improvement." 2 But unfortunately this broad 
sympathy with every field of knowledge was 
not yet wide-spread. The wonders and splen- 
dor of nature that had brought into existence 
the earliest religions and the earliest philoso- 
phies were now feared and despised as the basis 
of paganism; and on wholly false grounds a 
controversy was precipitated as to the relative 
worth of literature and of science that in one 
form or another has continued down to our 
own day. The bitterness with which the con- 
troversy has been carried on, and the extreme 
positions assumed by the partisans of the one 
side or the other, have concealed from view 

1 Pater, The Renaissance (New York, 1888), p. 34. 

2 Froude, Life and Letters of Erasmus (New York, 1894), p. 186. 



IS OF MOST WORTH? 61 

the truth that we are now able to perceive 
clearly — the truth that the indwelling reason, 
by whom all things are made, is as truly pres- 
ent, though in a different order of manifesta- 
tion, in the world of nature as in the world of 
spirit. One side of this truth was expressed by 
Schelling when he taught that nature is the 
embryonic life of spirit, and by Froebel when 
he wrote: "The spirit of God rests in nature, 
lives and reigns in nature, is expressed in na- 
ture, is communicated by nature, is developed 
and cultivated in nature." 1 The controversy 
as to the educational value of science, so far, 
at least, as it concerns educational standards 
and ideals, is, then, an illusory one. It is a 
mimic war, with words alone as weapons, that 
is fought either to expel nature from education 
or to subordinate all else in education to it. 
We should rather say, in the stately verse of 
Milton: 

"Accuse not Nature: she hath done her part; 
Do thou but thine." 

And that part is surely to study nature joy- 
fully, earnestly, reverently, as a mighty mani- 
festation of the power and grandeur of the 

1 Education of Man, translated by W. N. Hailmann (New- 
York, 1887), p. 154- 



62 



WHAT KNOWLEDGE 



Science as 
one of the 
humanities 



same spirit that finds expression in human 
achievement. We must enlarge, then, our 
conception of the humanities, for humanity is 
broader and deeper than we have hitherto sus- 
pected. It touches the universe at many more 
points than one; and, properly interpreted, 
the study of nature may be classed among the 
humanities as truly as the study of language 
itself. 

This conclusion, which would welcome sci- 
ence with open arms into the school and util- 
ize its opportunities and advantages at every 
stage of education, does not mean that all 
studies are of equal educational value, or that 
they are mutually and indifferently interchange- 
able, as are the parts of some machines. It 
means rather that the study of nature is en- 
titled to recognition on grounds similar to 
those put forward for the study of literature, 
of art, and of history. But among themselves 
these divisions of knowledge fall into an order 
of excellence as educational material that is 
determined by their respective relations to the 
development of the reflective reason. The ap- 
plication of this test must inevitably lead us, 
while honoring science and insisting upon its 
study, to place above it the study of history, 
of literature, of art, and of institutional life. 



IS OF MOST WORTH? 63 

But these studies may not for a moment be 
carried on without the study of nature or in 
neglect of it. They are all humanities in the 
truest sense, and it is a false philosophy of 
education that would cut us off from any one 
of them, or that would deny the common 
ground on which they rest. In every field of 
knowledge what we are studying is some law 
or phase of energy, and the original as well as 
the highest energy is will. In the world of 
nature it is exhibited in one series of forms, 
those, which produce the results known to us 
as chemical, physical, biological; in the history 
of mankind it is manifested in the forms of 
feelings, thoughts, deeds, institutions. Because 
the elements of self-consciousness and reflec- 
tion are present in the latter series and absent 
in the former, it is to these and the knowledge 
of them that we must accord the first place in 
any table of educational values. 

But education, as Mr. Froude has reminded Two aspects 

11 ( i r\ • j • • 1 of education 

us, 1 has two aspects. (Jn one side it is the 
cultivation of man's reason, the development 
of his spiritual nature. It elevates him above 
the pressure of material interests. It makes 
him superior to the pleasures and pains of a 
world which is but his temporary home, in 

1 Short Studies on Great Subjects (New York, 1872), II, 257. 



64 WHAT KNOWLEDGE 

filling his mind with higher subjects than the 
occupations of life would themselves provide 
him with." It is this aspect of education that 
I have been considering, for it is from this 
aspect that we derive our inspiration and our 
ideals. "But," continues Mr. Froude, "a life 
of speculation to the multitude would be a life 
of idleness and uselessness. They have to 
maintain themselves in industrious independ- 
ence in a world in which it has been said there 
are but three possible modes of existence — 
begging, stealing, and working; and education 
means also the equipping a man with means 
to earn his own living." It is this latter and 
very practical aspect of education that causes 
us to feel at times the full force of the ques- 
tion of worth in education. Immediate utility 
makes demands upon the school which it is 
unable wholly to neglect. If the school is to 
be the training-ground for citizenship, its prod- 
ucts must be usefully and soundly equipped 
as well as well disciplined and well informed. 
An educated proletariat — to use the forcible 
paradox of Bismarck — is a continual source of 
disturbance and danger to any nation. Act- 
ing upon this conviction, the great modern 
democracies — and the time seems to have 
come when a democracy may be defined as a 



IS OF MOST WORTH? 65 

government, of any form, in which public opin- 
ion habitually rules — are everywhere having a 
care that in education provision be made for 
the practical, or immediately useful. This is as 
it should be, but it exposes the school to a new 
series of dangers against which it must guard. 

Utility is a term that may be given either a The higher 
very broad or a very narrow meaning. There u ties 
are utilities higher and utilities lower, and 
under no circumstances will the true teacher 
ever permit the former to be sacrificed to the 
latter. This would be done if, in its zeal for 
fitting the child for self-support, the school 
were to neglect to lay the foundation for that 
higher intellectual and spiritual life which con- 
stitutes humanity's full stature. This founda- 
tion is made ready only if proper emphasis 
be laid, from the kindergarten to the college, 
on those studies whose subject-matter is the 
direct product of intelligence and will, and 
which can, therefore, make direct appeal to 
man's higher nature. The sciences and their 
applications are capable of use, even from the 
standpoint of this higher order of utilities, be- 
cause of the reason they exhibit and reveal. 
Man's rational freedom is the goal, and the 
sciences are the lower steps on the ladder that 
reaches to it. 



66 



WHAT KNOWLEDGE 



Professor 
Tyndall on 
science 



A splendid confirmation of this view of sci- 
ence is found in the notable Belfast address in 
which Professor Tyndall stormed the strong- 
holds of prejudice one and twenty years ago. 
Said Professor Tyndall: 1 

Science itself not unfrequently derives motive power 
from an ultra-scientific source. Some of its greatest dis- 
coveries have been made under the stimulus of a non- 
scientific ideal. This was the case amongst the ancients, 
and it has been so amongst ourselves. Mayer, Joule, 
and Colding, whose names are associated with the great- 
est of modern generalizations, were thus influenced. 
With his usual insight, Lange at one place remarks that 
"it is not always the objectively correct and intelligible 
that helps man most, or leads most quickly to the fullest 
and truest knowledge. As the sliding body upon the 
brachystochrone reaches its end sooner than by the 
straighter road of the inclined plane, so through the swing 
of the ideal we often arrive at the naked truth more 
rapidly than by the more direct processes of the under- 
standing." Whewell speaks of enthusiasm of temper as 
a hindrance to science; but he means the enthusiasm of 
weak heads. There is a strong and resolute enthusiasm 
in which science finds an ally; and it is to the lowering 
of this fire, rather than to the diminution of intellectual 
insight, that the lessening productiveness of men of sci- 
ence in their mature years is to be ascribed. Mr. Buckle 
sought to detach intellectual achievement from moral 
force. He gravely erred; for without moral force to 

1 Presidential address, British Association for the Advance- 
ment of Science, Belfast, 1874. 



IS OF MOST WORTH? 67 

whip it into action, the achievements of the intellect 
would be poor indeed. 

It has been said that science divorces itself from liter- 
ature; but the statement, like so many others, arises 
from lack of knowledge. A glance at the less technical 
writings of its leaders — of its Helmholtz, its Huxley, 
and its du Bois-Reymond — would show what breadth of 
literary culture they command. Where among modern 
writers can you find their superiors in clearness and vigor 
of literary style ? Science desires not isolation, but freely 
combines with every effort toward the bettering of man's 
estate. Single-handed, and supported not by outward 
sympathy, but by inward force, it has built at least one 
great wing of the many-mansioned home which man in 
his totality demands. And if rough walls and protruding 
rafter-ends indicate that on one side the edifice is still 
incomplete, it is only by wise combination of the parts 
required with those already irrevocably built that we can 
hope for completeness. There is no necessary incon- 
gruity between what has been accomplished and what 
remains to be done. The moral glow of Socrates, which 
we all feel by ignition, has in it nothing incompatible with 
the physics of Anaxagoras which he so much scorned, but 
which he would hardly scorn to-day. . . . 

The world embraces not only a Newton, but a Shaks- 
pere — not only a Boyle, but a Raphael — not only a Kant, 
but a Beethoven — not only a Darwin, but a Carlyle. 
Not in each of these, but in all, is human nature whole. 
They are not opposed, but supplementary — not mutually 
exclusive, but reconcilable. And if, unsatisfied with them 
all, the human mind, with the yearning of a pilgrim for 
his distant home, will still turn to the Mystery from which 
it has emerged, seeking so to fashion it as to give unity 



68 WHAT KNOWLEDGE 

to thought and faith, so long as this is done, not only 
without intolerance or bigotry of any kind, but with the 
enlightened recognition that ultimate fixity of conception 
is here unattainable, and that each succeeding age must 
be held free to fashion the mystery in accordance with its 
own needs — then, casting aside all the restrictions of 
Materialism, I would affirm this to be a field for the no- 
blest exercise of what, in contrast with the knowing 
faculties, may be called the creative faculties of man. 

Character and Close as are man's structural relations to the 
the moral lower animals, his equipment is peculiar to 
himself. The actions of the lower animals are 
conditioned by sensations and momentary im- 
pulses. Man, on the other hand, is enabled to 
raise himself above fleeting sensations to the 
realm of ideas, and in that realm he finds his 
real life. Similarly, man's will gradually frees 
itself from bondage to a chain of causes deter- 
mined for it from without, and attains to a 
power of independent self-determination ac- 
cording to durable and continuing ends of 
action. This constitutes character, which, in 
Emerson's fine phrase, is the moral order seen 
through the medium of an individual nature. 
Freedom of the will is not, then, a metaphys- 
ical notion, nor is it obtained from nature or 
seen in nature. It is a development in the life 
of the human soul. Freedom and rationality 
are two names for the same thing, and their 



IS OF MOST WORTH? 69 

highest development is the end of human life. 
This development is not, as Locke thought, a 
process arising without the mind and acting 
upon it, a passive and pliable recipient. Much 
less is it one that could be induced in the 
hypothetical statue of Condillac and Bonnet. 
It is the very life of the soul itself. 

There is a striking passage in The Marble Education 
Faun in which Hawthorne suggests the idea spin ^ al 

# tefc> growth 

that the task of the sculptor is not, by carv- 
ing, to impress a figure upon the marble, but 
rather, by the touch of genius, to set free the 
glorious form that the cold grasp of the stone 
imprisons. With similar insight, Browning puts 
these words into the mouth of his Paracelsus: 

"Truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise 
From outward things, whate'er you may believe. 
There is an inmost centre in us all, 
Where truth abides in fulness; and around, 
Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in, 
This perfect, clear perception. . . . 

. . . And, to know, 
Rather consists in opening out a way 
Whence the imprisoned splendor may escape, 
Than in effecting entry for a light 
Supposed to be without." 

This is the poetical form of the truth that I 
believe is pointed to by both philosophy and 



70 WE A T KNOWLEDGE 

science. It offers us a sure standing-ground 
for our educational theory. It reveals to us, 
not as an hypothesis but as a fact, education 
as spiritual growth toward intellectual and 
moral perfection, and saves us from the peril 
of viewing it as an artificial process according 
to mechanical formulas. Finally, it assures us 
that while no knowledge is worthless — for it 
all leads us back to the common cause and 
ground of all — yet that knowledge is of most 
worth which stands in closest relation to the 
highest forms of the activity of that spirit 
which is created in the image of Him who holds 
nature and man alike in the hollow of his hand. 



IV 
IS THERE A NEW EDUCATION? 



Presidential address before the Association of Colleges 
and Preparatory Schools of the Middle States and 
Maryland, at Easton, Pennsylvania, November 29, 
1895 



IS THERE A NEW EDUCATION? 

The title of this discussion is designedly 
thrown into the form of a question. Its pur- 
pose is to provoke, if possible, a difference of 
opinion — always a healthier and more produc- 
tive intellectual state than the dull mediocrity 
of agreement. Difference of opinion begets 
doubt, doubt begets inquiry, and inquiry even- 
tually leads to truth. \ irgil's fine line, 

Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas, 

is profoundly true; but more fortunate still is 
he who comes to his knowledge by the sure 
method of honest doubt. 

For a generation we have been doing lip- Evolution and 
service to the doctrine of evolution; but only 
with great slowness and difficulty do old forms 
of speech and old habits of mind fit themselves 
to a new point of view that makes so strong an 
appeal both to our reason and to our imagina- 
tion. In no department of knowledge is this 
more true than in the field of education. Edu- 
cation is essentially a conservative process; it 
cherishes its time-worn instruments and reveres 

73 



74 IS THERE A NEW EDUCATION? 

its time-honored standards. The treasures of 
the mind are too precious to be lightly exposed 
to the loss or harm that might come to them 
through change. Yet the opinion has found 
lodgment among our craft that after all, and 
despite the excellence of old methods and old 
standards, the educational theory and practise 
of a given age or generation must stand in close 
relation to its intellectual and ethical ideals, 
and to the material fabric of its civilization: 
and surely all three of these habitually vary, 
not only over long periods but in relatively 
short intervals of time. It is a grave matter 
for the teacher if virtue is identical with knowl- 
edge, as Socrates taught; or if it is the result 
of habit, as Aristotle held; or if it is the cun- 
ning invention of rulers, as Mandeville sug- 
gested; or if it is mere skill in calculating the 
chances of pleasure and pain, as Bentham laid 
down. It is important, too, primarily for the 
higher education, but eventually for the lower 
schools as well, if our intellectual ideal is rep- 
resented by the active mind of a Leibniz or a 
Gladstone, with its immense energy and broad 
range of interests; or if it is better typified by 
the narrow, plodding specialization of a Darwin 
or of those Teutonic philologers who are un- 
duly distracted if their investigations cover 



IS THERE A NEW EDUCATION? 75 

more than the gerund or the dative case. Still 
more directly must our education depend upon 
the material equipment of the time. In this 
day of innumerable printing-presses, with a 
power of production sadly out of proportion to 
their power of discrimination, it is quite incon- 
ceivable that we should not find ourselves 
forced to con anew the grounds on which rest 
the principles and methods that have come 
down to us from the age of manuscripts and 
pack-saddles. Such a process of questioning 
has been under way for some time past, and 
has contributed in no small degree to that 
marvellous enthusiasm for education and to 
that belief in it, the evidences of which are to 
be seen on every hand. 

There are three avenues of scientific ap- study of 
proach to the study of education, and in each ® ^leuae 
of them the evolutionary point of view is not 
only illuminating but controlling. These three 
avenues are the physiological, the psycholog- 
ical, and the sociological. Their points of con- 
tact are many and their interrelations are 
close. Modern psychology has already given 
up the attempt to treat mental life without 
reference to its physical basis; and it will 
sooner or later regard any interpretation as in- 
complete that does not relate the individual to 



76 IS THERE A NEW EDUCATION? 

what may be called the social life or conscious- 
ness. Man's institutional life is as much a 
part of his real self as his physical existence 
or his mental constitution. Robinson Crusoe 
is, in one of the catch phrases of the day, a 
barren ideality. 

It must be admitted that this point of view 
is both very old and very new. It is very old, 
for it was Aristotle himself who wrote: "Man 
is by nature a political animal. And he who 
by nature, and not by mere accident, is with- 
out a state, is either above humanity or below 
it." 1 It is also very new, for it is in flat con- 
tradiction to the doctrine of Rousseau: "Com- 
pelled to oppose nature or our social institutions, 
we must choose between making a man and a 
citizen, for we cannot make both at once" 2 — 
the crudeness and superficiality of which have 
not prevented it from exercising a wide and 
long-continued influence. Modern philosophy 
confirms here, as so often, the analysis of Aris- 
totle; and it rejects, as is becoming customary, 
the extreme individualism of the later eight- 
eenth century. The significance of this for our 
educational theory is all-important. 

1 The Politics of Aristotle (Oxford, 1885), I, 2, Jowett's transla- 
tion, p. 4. 

2 Rousseau's Entile (New York, 1893), translated by W. H. 
Payne, p. 5. 



IS THERE A NEW EDUCATION? 77 

Returning now to the first of the three pil- The 
lars on which the modern study of education agpg*° loglcal 
rests — the physiological — it may be useful to 
recall briefly what consideration has been given 
to it in the past. All of the older culture- 
nations laid stress upon it, and some of them 
dealt with it in systematic fashion. But the 
Greeks alone understood the educational value 
of play. Their great national games combined 
systematic physical training and play in a way 
that we have not yet succeeded in equalling. 
The ascetic ideal that ruled the schools of the 
Middle Ages left no place for a continuance of 
the Greek practise, and it was forgotten. We 
find ourselves to-day struggling to imitate it. 
In Germany systematic physical training is 
made much of in education, but genuine play 
is not prominent. In England, on the con- 
trary, play has been found so successful in de- 
veloping strength and suppleness of body and 
sturdy, independent character that anything 
approaching systematic, formal training is re- 
garded as almost unnecessary. In this country 
the present tendency is to develop both ele- 
ments, after the fashion of the Greeks; and it 
is to be hoped that the outcome will be even 
more satisfactory than it was at Athens and at 
Corinth. 



78 IS THERE A NEW EDUCATION? 

But physical and physiological considera- 
tions cut far deeper than this. They demand 
a hearing when we have under discussion 
questions of school hours and recesses, of pro- 
grammes and tasks, of school furniture, of 
text-books and blackboards, of light, heat, and 
fresh air. On all of these topics we have re- 
cently learned much that has not yet found 
its way into our practise. College faculties and 
school-teachers, framers of examination tests, 
donors of laboratories and dormitories, and, 
most of all, architects are as a rule oblivious 
to the vital interest that the pupil has in mat- 
ters of this kind. Considerations of tradition, 
convenience, cost, and external appearance are 
allowed full swing, and the growing youth 
must fit the Procrustean bed as best they can. 
The signs of malnutrition and weakness, as 
described, for example, by Warner, and the 
laws of mental and physical fatigue, as arrived 
at by such investigations as those of Mosso and 
of Burgerstein, are about as familiar to teach- 
ers in college and in preparatory schools as are 
the Laws of Manu. And yet they affect vitally 
every young man or young woman who enters 
a schoolroom or a college. No amount of thun- 
dering eloquence on the value of the ancient 
classics, no emphasis on character as the sole 



IS THERE A NEW EDUCATION? 79 

end of education can make amends for our 
failure to study the facts dealing with the 
physical and physiological elements in educa- 
tion, and for our delay in applying them. We 
need to be strongly reminded that wickedness 
is closely akin to weakness, and then to con- 
sider the moral consequences of our physiolog- 
ical ignorance. 1 

The relation of psychology to education is The 
the one subject on which the teacher of to-day Psychological 
is supposed to be informed. Normal schools 
without number, and here and there a college, 
give definite instruction in the subject. Yet 
a careful inspection of the most popular text- 
books in use, and visits to some hundreds of 
classrooms, have convinced me that the results 
of this knowledge, if it exists, are, in the field 
of secondary and higher education, almost nil. 
In this respect the elementary teacher is far in 
advance. Perhaps no secondary school or col- 
lege in America can show teaching to compare 
in mastery of scientific method, and in tech- 
nical skill, with the best teaching to be seen 
in many of the public elementary schools, par- 
ticularly in the Western States. In conse- 
quence of this, we may safely assume that 

1 Compare "Moral Education and Will-Training," by G. 
Stanley Hall, in Pedagogical Seminary, II, 72-89. 



8o 



IS THERE A NEW EDUCATION? 



Limitations 
of experience 
in teaching 



pupils fresh from the vigorous intellectual and 
moral growth of a well-conducted elementary 
school will turn aside from the machine meth- 
ods and dull, uninspiring class-exercises of our 
average academy with disgust. The new edu- 
cational life-blood is flowing most freely and 
vigorously in the veins of the elementary 
teacher. Here and there a secondary school- 
master, and here and there a college president 
or professor, takes a genuine and intelligent 
interest in education for its own sake; but the 
vast majority know nothing of it, and are but 
little affected by it. They are content to ac- 
cumulate what they are pleased to term "ex- 
perience"; but their relation to education is 
just that of the motorman on a trolley-car to 
the science of electricity. They use it; but of 
its nature, principles, and processes they are 
profoundly ignorant. The one qualification 
most to be feared in a teacher, and the one to 
be most carefully inquired into, is this same 
"experience" when it stands alone. I am pro- 
foundly distrustful of it. The pure empiricist 
never can have any genuine experience, any 
more than an animal, because he is unable to 
interrogate the phenomena that present them- 
selves to him, and hence is unable to under- 
stand them. The scientific teacher, the the- 



IS THERE A NEW EDUCATION? 81 

orist, on the contrary, asks what manner of 
phenomena these are that are before him, 
what are their inner relations, and the prin- 
ciples on which they are based. This, of 
course, is the first great step, taken by all sci- 
entific method, toward a knowledge of causes. 
It is at this point that we reach the real reason 
for the need of an accurate knowledge of psy- 
chology on the part of the teacher. His deal- 
ings in the schoolroom are primarily with men- 
tal processes and mental growth. Unless these 
are scientifically studied and understood, or — 
and this does not happen often — unless natural 
psychological insight comes to the rescue of 
psychological ignorance, the teaching is bound 
to be mechanical; and the longer it is con- 
tinued, the more "experience" is acquired, 
and the more wooden and mechanical it be- 
comes. 

A short time ago I was present at an exer- 
cise in modern history, given to an undergrad- 
uate class averaging over eighteen years of age, 
in one of our Eastern colleges. The text- 
book in the hands of the students was of a 
very elementary character, and is much used 
in public high schools, both East and West. 
The teacher was a college graduate, and had 
held his position for several years. These 



82 IS THERE A NEW EDUCATION? 

years had been years of "experience," and 
would have been strongly urged as an impor- 
tant qualification had his name been under 
consideration for promotion or for transfer to 
another institution. Yet the entire hour that 
I spent in his class was given up to the dicta- 
tion of an abstract of the text-book. This, he 
told me, was his usual method. The students 
took down the dictation, word for word, in a 
dull, listless way, and gave a sigh of mingled 
despair and relief when it came to an end. 
This process went on several times weekly for 
either one or two years. I ascertained from 
the instructor that he called it "hammering 
the facts home." He is, for aught I know, 
"hammering" yet, and now has some additional 
"experience" to his credit. So have his pupils. 
No amount of psychological learning could 
make it impossible for the inquirer to find 
cases like this, and the hundreds of others of 
which they are typical, in the schools and col- 
leges; but a psychological training on the part 
of the teacher would go far to diminish their 
number. Professor Royce pointed out 1 sev- 
eral years ago that what the teacher has chiefly 
to gain from the study of psychology is not 

1 "Is There a Science of Education?" in Educational Review, 
(New York, 189 1), I, 15-25; 1 21-13 2. 



IS THERE A NEW EDUCATION? S$ 

rules of procedure, but the psychological spirit. 
The teacher, he adds, should be a naturalist 
and cultivate the habit of observing the men- 
tal life of his pupils for its own sake. In this 
he will follow the method common to all natu- 
ralists: "What is here in this live thing ? Why 
does it move thus ? What is it doing ? What 
feelings does it appear to have ? What type 
of rudimentary intelligence is it showing?" 
Such questions as these form the habit of 
watching minds, and of watching them closely. 
This habit is the surest road to good teaching, 
and its formation is the best service that psy- 
chology can render to the classroom. Until a 
teacher has acquired that habit and subordi- 
nated his schoolroom procedure to it, he is 
not teaching at all; at best he is either lectur- 
ing or hearing recitations. 

We are chiefly indebted to the students and The doctrines 
followers of Herbart for the present wide- ° fHerba ^ : 

r Apperception 

spread interest in this country in two psycho- and interest 

logical doctrines of the greatest importance 

for all teaching — the doctrine of apperception 

and the doctrine of interest. The former has 

to do with mental assimilation, the latter with 

the building of character and ideals. I know 

of no more fruitful field for the application of 

both of these than the freshman year of the 



84 IS THERE A NEW EDUCATION? 

college course. My observation has taught 
me that the work of the freshman class in 
college is, as a rule, very ineffective. College 
teachers who admit this fact are in the habit 
of accounting for it by alleging the difficulty of 
welding into a homogeneous mass the new stu- 
dents of different advantages, training, and 
mental habits. The task is more than diffi- 
cult; it is impossible, and ought never to be 
attempted, much less encouraged. That it 
goes on year after year in a hundred colleges 
is due to the strait-jacket system of class 
teaching, by which we defy the rules of God 
and man to the glory of what, in our profes- 
sional cant, we call "sound education." If 
we could secure a hearing for the doctrine of 
apperception, all this would be changed. We 
should then recognize in our practise as we do 
in our faith that the mind is not a passive re- 
cipient of the impressions that reach it; that 
it reacts upon them, colors them, and makes 
them a part of itself in accordance with the 
tendency, the point of view, and the posses- 
sions that it already has. This tendency, this 
point of view, and these possessions differ in 
the case of every individual. Instead of over- 
looking or seeking to annul these differences, 
we should first understand them and then 



IS THERE A NEW EDUCATION? S5 

base our teaching upon them. If the first 
month of freshman year were spent in care- 
fully ascertaining the stage of development, 
in power and acquirement, that each pupil 
had reached, it would be possible so to order 
and adjust the work of the year as to make 
it useful and educative. I have known case 
after case in which the opposite policy of 
treating all upon one plane, and making the 
same demands upon all, has made a college 
course a source of positive harm; it also ac- 
counts, in greater measure than we are aware 
of, for the large proportion of students who 
fall away at the end of the freshman and soph- 
omore years. Yet so long as college teachers 
know so little psychology as to cling to the old 
dogma of formal discipline — which adds to 
real value some very distinct limitations — and 
continue to pound away on so much mathe- 
matics to train the reasoning powers and so 
much Greek grammar to train something else, 
regardless of the content of the instruction 
and of all other considerations — just so long 
will one mind be lost or injured for every one 
that is saved or benefited. As Colonel Parker 
has so forcibly said: "We dwell on those who 
have been saved by our older methods, but 
who has counted the lost?" 



86 IS THERE A NEW EDUCATION? 

The situation is not very different with re- 
spect to the doctrine of interest. We continu- 
ally complain that valuable and necessary in- 
struction given in school and in college is 
forgotten, that it is not retained, not extended, 
and not applied. The fault lies partly, no 
doubt, with the pupils, but largely with our- 
selves. We have still to learn what interest 
means, how it is changed from indirect to 
direct, and how it is built up into a permanent 
element of character. We are inexperienced in 
seeking out and seizing upon the present and 
temporary interests of the student, and in 
using them as a factor in training. It is a 
common thing to hear it said that since life is 
full of obstacles and character is strengthened 
by overcoming them, so the school and college 
course should not hesitate to compel students 
to do distasteful and difficult things simply 
because they are distasteful and difficult. I 
do not hesitate to say that I believe that doc- 
trine to be profoundly immoral and its conse- 
quences calamitous. But, it is answered, you 
certainly would not trust to a student's whims 
and allow him to do or not do as he pleases. 
Certainly not; and that is not the alternative. 
The proper and scientific course is to search 
for the pupil's empirical and natural interests, 



IS THERE A NEW EDUCATION? 87 

and to build upon them. This is not always 
easy; it requires knowledge, patience, and 
skill. It is far easier to treat the entire class 
alike and to drive them over the hurdles set 
by a single required course of study, in the 
vain hope that the weak and timid will not be 
injured as much as the strong and confident 
will be benefited, and that somehow or other 
the algebraic sum of the results of the process 
will bear a positive sign. I earnestly com- 
mend to every teacher the study of these two 
principles, apperception and interest. I do so 
in the firm belief that the practical result of 
that study would be an immense uplifting of 
the teaching efficiency of every educational 
institution in the United States. 

What, for lack of a better term, I call the The 
sociological aspect of education is, in many S0C10 °& C 

■ . aspect 

respects, the most important of all. Under 
this head are to be put such questions as those 
that deal with the aim and limits of education, 
its relation to the state, its organization and 
administration, and the course of study to be 
pursued. I can now refer to but a single one 
of these topics. Doctor Harris, in the opening 
paragraphs of his well-known report on the 
correlation of studies, dealt a final blow to the 
idea that the course of study is to be settled 



88 IS THERE A NEW EDUCATION? 

either by tradition or by conditions wholly 
psychological. "The game of chess," he points 
out, 1 "would furnish a good course of study 
for the discipline of the powers of attention 
and calculation of abstract combinations, but 
it would give its possessor little or no knowl- 
edge of man or nature. . . . Psychology of 
both kinds, physiological and introspective, 
can hold only a subordinate place in the set- 
tlement of questions relating to the correla- 
tion of studies." He also shows that the chief 
consideration to which all others are to be 
subordinated is the "requirement of the civili- 
zation into which the child is born, as deter- 
mining not only what he shall study in school, 
but what habits and customs he shall be 
taught in the family before the school age 
arrives; as well as that he shall acquire a 
skilled acquaintance with some one of a def- 
inite series of trades, professions, or vocations 
in the years that follow school; and, further- 
more, that this question of the relation of the 
pupil to his civilization determines what polit- 
ical duties he shall assume and what religious 
faith or spiritual aspirations shall be adopted 
for the conduct of his life." 2 

1 Report of the Committee of Fifteen on Elementary Education 
(New York, 1895), p. 42. 

2 Ibid., p. 41. 



IS THERE A NEW EDUCATION? 89 

It is at this point that the study of educa- 
tion from the sociological point of view begins. 
Instead of forcing the course of study to suit 
the necessities of some preconceived system of 
educational organization, it should determine 
and control that organization absolutely. Were 
this done, the troubles of the secondary school, 
the Cinderella of our educational system, would 
disappear. Just at present it is jammed into 
the space left between the elementary school 
and the college, without any rational and or- 
dered relation to either. 

The ever-present problem of college entrance Barrier 

1 • r • i it 1 between 

is purely artificial, and has no business to ex- secondary 
ist at all. We have ingeniously created it, and school and 

, , . . , . , college 

are much less ingeniously trying to solve it. 
Leibniz might have said that mental develop- 
ment, as well as nature, never makes leaps. It 
is constant and continuous. The idea that 
there is a great gulf fixed between the sixteenth 
and seventeenth years, or between the seven- 
teenth and eighteenth, which only a supreme 
effort can bridge, is a mere superstition that 
not even age can make respectable. It ought 
to be as easy and as natural for the student 
to pass from the secondary school to the college 
as it is for him to pass from one class to an- 
other in the school or in the college. In like 



9 o IS THERE A NEW EDUCATION? 

fashion, the work and methods of the one 
ought to lead easily and gradually to those of 
the other. That they do not do so in the edu- 
cational systems of France and Germany is 
one of the main defects of those systems. 
The American college as a school of broad and 
liberal education, a place where studies are 
carried on with reference to their general and 
more far-reaching relations, is indispensable 
for the very reason that it permits and encour- 
ages the expansion and development of school 
work in the widest possible way, before the 
narrow specialization of the university is en- 
tered upon. Happily, there are in the United 
States no artificial obstacles interposed between 
the college and the university. We make it 
very easy to pass from the one to the other; 
the custom is to accept any college degree for 
just what it means. We make it equally easy 
to pass from one grade or class to another, and 
from elementary school to secondary school, 
the presumption always being that the pupils 
are ready and competent to go forward. The 
barrier between secondary school and college 
is the only one that we insist upon retaining. 
It is not necessary to dispense with the 
highly valuable college-admission examination 
if that examination can be properly organized 



IS THERE A NEW EDUCATION? 91 

and conducted. To do this will require, first, 
a general agreement upon the definitions of 
the various subjects a knowledge of which 
must or may be offered for admission to col- 
lege, and an arrangement by which secondary- 
school teachers and college teachers shall co- 
operate both in framing such definitions, in 
formulating the scope and details of the exam- 
inations, and in rating the performances of the 
candidates. Under these circumstances, the 
college-admission examination might be made 
a very important educational instrument, of 
value not alone to the college, but to the sec- 
ondary school as well. This principle of co-op- 
eration between secondary school and college 
in formulating conditions of college admis- 
sion and in administering the college-admission 
examination does not involve any restriction 
upon the number or variety of secondary-school 
subjects that may be accepted in partial ful- 
filment of the requirements for admission to 
any particular college. 1 

Public opinion itself, despite the protests of The 
the pundits of the faculties, is forcing an ex- J^he^urse 
tension of the course of study. It is one of of study 
the best bits of grim humor that our American 

1 This important reform has now been admirably accomplished 
by the College Entrance Examination Board, whose offices are 
in New York. 



92 IS THERE A NEW EDUCATION? 

practise, inherited from the mother country, 
affords, that the designation "liberal" has 
come to be claimed as the sole prerogative of 
a very narrow and technical course of study 
that was invented for a very narrow and tech- 
nical purpose, and that has been very imper- 
fectly liberalized in the intervening centuries. 
It ought to soften somewhat the asperity of 
teachers of Greek to remember that the very 
arguments by which they are in the habit of 
resisting the inroads of the modern languages, 
the natural sciences, and economics, were used 
not so many hundreds of years ago to keep 
Greek itself from edging its way into the cur- 
riculum at all. Paulsen is indubitably right in 
his insistence upon the fact that the modern 
world has developed a culture of its own, 
which, while an outgrowth of the culture of 
antiquity, is quite distinct from it. It is to 
this modern culture that our education must 
lead. The first question to be asked of any 
course of study is: Does it lead to a knowl- 
edge of our contemporary civilization ? If 
not, it is neither efficient nor liberal. 

In society as it exists to-day the dominant 
note, running through all of our struggles and 
problems, is economic — what the old Greeks 
might have called political. Yet it is a con- 



IS THERE A NEW EDUCATION? 93 

stant fight to get any proper teaching from 
the economic and social point of view put be- 
fore high-school and college students. They 
are considered too young or too immature to 
study such recondite subjects, although the 
nice distinctions between the Greek moods 
and tenses and the principles of conic sections, 
with their appeal to the highly trained mathe- 
matical imagination, are their daily food. As 
a result, thousands of young men and young 
women, who have neither the time, the money, 
nor the desire for a university career, are sent 
forth from the schools either in profound igno- 
rance of the economic basis of modern society, 
or with only the most superficial and mislead- 
ing knowledge of it. The indefensibleness of 
this policy, even from the most practical point 
of view, is apparent when we bear in mind that 
in this country we are in the habit of submit- 
ting questions, primarily economic in character, 
every two or four years to the judgment and 
votes of what is substantially an untutored 
mob. If practical politics only dealt with 
chemistry as well as with economics, we could, 
by the same short and easy method, come to 
some definite and authoritative conclusion con- 
cerning the atomic theory and learn the real 
facts regarding helium. But since the eco- 



94 



IS THERE A NEW EDUCATION? 



Attitude of 
teachers 
toward the 
scientific 
study of 
education 



nomic facts, and not the chemical or linguistic 
facts, are the ones to be bound up most closely 
with our public and private life, they should, 
on that very account, be strongly represented 
in every curriculum. We can leave questions 
as to the undulatory theory of light and as to 
Grimm's and Verner's laws to the specialists; 
but we may not do the same thing with ques- 
tions as to production and exchange, as to 
monetary policy and taxation. The course 
of study is not liberal, in this century, that 
does not recognize these facts and emphasize 
economics as it deserves. I cite but this one 
instance of conflict between the inherited and 
the scientifically constructed course of study. 
The argument and its illustration might be 
much extended. 

I have now indicated how I should answer 
my own question, and have briefly pointed out 
typical grounds on which that answer rests. 
There remains the ungracious duty of adding 
a word regarding the attitude of college facul- 
ties and schoolmasters toward the scientific 
study of education. The recklessness with 
which the man of letters, sometimes the col- 
lege president, and now and then even the 
more canny college professor, will rush into 
the public discussion of matters of education 



IS THERE A NEW EDUCATION? 95 

concerning which he has no knowledge what- 
ever, and to which he has never given a half- 
hour's connected thought, is appalling. Opin- 
ion serves for information, and prejudice usurps 
the place of principle. The popular journals 
and the printed proceedings of educational as- 
sociations teem with perfectly preposterous 
contributions bearing the signatures of worthy 
and distinguished men, who would not dream 
of writing dogmatically upon a physical, a bi- 
ological, or a linguistic problem. For some 
recondite reason they face the equally difficult 
and unfamiliar problems of education without 
a tremor. The effect is bad enough on the 
colleges and schools themselves, but it is far 
worse on the public generally, who are thus 
led off to the worship of false gods. Even in 
the largest American institutions, where most 
is at stake, the men who give any conscien- 
tious and prolonged study to education itself, 
as distinct from the department of knowledge 
in which their direct work lies, can be counted 
upon the fingers of one hand. As a conse- 
quence, many college faculties are no better 
qualified to decree courses of study and con- 
ditions of admission than they are to adopt a 
system of ventilation or of electric lighting. 
In time, doubtless, this will be recognized, and 



96 IS THERE A NEW EDUCATION? 

in the former case, as in the latter, the facul- 
ties will submit to be guided by specialists who 
do know. That will never come to pass, how- 
ever, until school and college teachers see 
clearly that scholarship is one thing and knowl- 
edge of the educational process quite another; 
that long service in a school or college is almost 
as compatible with ignorance of education, 
scientifically considered, as long residence in a 
dwelling is compatible with ignorance of archi- 
tecture and carpentry. 

Doctor Johnson's acumen was equal to draw- 
ing a distinction between the new as the hith- 
erto non-existent, the new as the comparatively 
recent, and the new as the hitherto unfamiliar. 
In each and all of these senses of the word, I 
am confident that there is a new education. 



FIVE EVIDENCES OF AN EDUCATION 



An address before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Vassar 
College, June 10, 1901 



FIVE EVIDENCES OF AN EDUCATION 

"If you had had children, sir/' said Bos- 
well, "would you have taught them anything ?" 
"I hope," replied Doctor Johnson, "that I 
should have willingly lived on bread and water 
to obtain instruction for them; but I would not 
have set their future friendship to hazard, for 
the sake of thrusting into their heads knowl- 
edge of things for which they might not per- 
haps have either taste or necessity. You 
teach your daughters the diameters of the 
planets, and wonder when you have done that 
they do not delight in your company." From 
which it appears that Doctor Johnson, by a 
sort of prolepsis, was moved to contribute to 
the discussion of one of the vexed questions of 
our time. Who is the educated man ? By 
what signs shall we know him ? 

"In the first golden age of the world," Who is the 
Erasmus observes, in his Praise of Folly, "there ^ c ? a e 
was no need of these perplexities. There was 
then no other sort of learning but what was 
naturally collected from every man's common 
sense, improved by an easy experience. What 

99 



ioo FIVE EVIDENCES 

use could there have been of grammar, when 
all men spoke the same mother tongue, and 
aimed at no higher pitch of oratory than barely 
to be understood by each other ? What need 
of logic, when they were too wise to enter into 
any dispute ? Or what occasion for rhetoric, 
where no difference arose to require any labori- 
ous decision ?" Surely, in contrasting this pic- 
ture of a far-off golden age with our present- 
day strenuous age of steel, we must be moved 
to say, with the preacher: "In much wisdom 
is much grief; and he that increaseth knowledge 
increaseth sorrow." 
The It is only two hundred and fifty years ago 

that Comenius urged, with ardent zeal, the 
establishment in London of a college of learned 
men who should bring together in one book 
the sum total of human wisdom, so expressed 
as to meet the needs of both the present and 
all future generations. This scheme for a Pan- 
sophia, or repository of all learning, proved 
very attractive in the seventeenth century, 9 
for it easily adjusted itself to the notions of a 
period which looked upon learning as a sub- 
stantial and measurable quantity, to be ac- 
quired and possessed. Unfortunately, this 
quantitative ideal of education, with its re- 
sultant processes and standards, is still widely 



quantitative 
ideal 



OF AN EDUCATION 101 

influential, and it tempts us to seek the evi- 
dences of an education in the number of lan- 
guages learned, in the variety of sciences 
studied, and generally in the quantity of facts 
held in the memory reserve. But, on the other 
hand, any serious attempt to apply quantita- 
tive standards to the determination of educa- 
tion quickly betrays their inadequacy and their 
false assumptions. If to be educated means 
to know nature in systematic fashion and to 
be able to interpret it, then nearly every man 
of letters, ancient or modern, must be classed 
with the uneducated. Or if to be educated 
means to have sympathetic, almost affection- 
ate, insight into the great masterpieces of art 
and of literature, then innumerable great men 
of action, who have fully represented the ideals 
and the power of their time and who mani- 
fested most admirable qualities of mind and 
of character, were uneducated. The case is 
even worse to-day. A host of knowledges 
compass us about on every side and bewilder 
by their variety and their interest. We must 
exclude the many to choose the one. The 
penalty of choice is deprivation; the price of 
not choosing is shallowness and incapacity. 
The quantitative method of estimating educa- 
tion breaks down, then, of its own weight. A 



102 



FIVE EVIDENCES 



The fivefold 

spiritual 

inheritance 



true standard is to be sought in some other 
direction. 

A full analysis of the facts of life as they 
confront us to-day would show, I feel confident, 
that all knowledges and all influences are not 
on a single plane of indifference toward the 
human mind that would be educated. All 
parts of the spiritual machine are not mutu- 
ally interchangeable. There are needs to be 
met and longings to be satisfied that will not 
accept any vicarious response to their demands. 
The scientific, the literary, the aesthetic, the 
institutional, and the religious aspects of life 
and of civilization, while interdependent, are 
yet independent of each other, in the sense 
that no one of them can be reduced to a func- 
tion of another, or can be stated in terms of 
another. 1 Therefore, each of these five aspects 
must, I think, be represented in some degree 
in every scheme of training which has education 
for its end. Nevertheless, this training when 
it arrives at education will not suffer itself to 
be measured and estimated quantitatively in 
terms either of science, of letters, of art, of 
institutions, or of religion. It will have pro- 
duced certain traits of intellect and of char- 
acter which find expression in ways open to 

1 See pp. 26-38. 



OF AN EDUCATION 103 

the observation of all men, and it is toward 
these traits or habits, not toward external and 
substantial acquisition or accomplishment, that 
one must turn to find the true and sure evi- 
dences of an education, as education is con- 
ceived to-day. 

First among the evidences of an education Correctness 

11 ■ ■ ■ , i_ r and precision 

name correctness and precision in the use or in t £ e use of 

the mother tongue. Important as this power the mother 
is, and is admitted to be, it is a comparatively ° ngue 
new thing in education. The modern Euro- 
pean languages took on educational significance 
only when the decentralization of culture be- 
gan at the close of the Middle Ages. So late 
as 1549 Jacques du Bellay supported the study 
of French with the very mild assertion that it 
is "not so poor a tongue as many think it." 
Mulcaster, writing a little later, found it neces- 
sary to tell why his book on education was 
put in English rather than in Latin, and to 
defend the vernacular when he referred to its 
educational usefulness. Melanchthon put Ger- 
man in a class with Greek and Hebrew, and 
contrasted all three unfavorably with Latin. 
Indeed it was not until the present German 
Emperor plainly told the Berlin School Con- 
ference of 1890 that a national basis was lack- 
ing in German education; that the foundation 



104 FIVE EVIDENCES 

of the gymnasium course of study must be 
German; that the duty of the schoolmasters 
was to train the young to become Germans, 
not Greeks and Romans; and that the German 
language must be made the centre around 
which all other subjects revolved, that a re- 
vision of the official school programme was 
brought about that made place for the really 
serious study of the German language and lit- 
erature. And to-day, where the influence of 
the English universities and of not a few Amer- 
ican colleges is potent, the study of English is 
slight and insignificant indeed. The supersti- 
tion that the best gate to English is through 
the Latin is anything but dead. 

But for the great mass of the people the 
vernacular is not only the established medium 
of instruction, but fortunately also an im- 
portant subject of study. A chief measure of 
educational accomplishment is the ease, the 
correctness, and the precision with which one 
uses this instrument. 

It is no disrespect to the splendid literatures 
which are embodied in the French and the 
German tongues, and no lack of appreciation 
of the services of those great peoples to civili- 
zation and to culture, to point out that of 
modern languages the English is easily the 



OF AN EDUCATION 105 

first and the most powerful, for "it is the 
greatest instrument of communication that is 
now in use among men upon the earth." It 
is the speech of an active people among 
whom individual liberty and personal initia- 
tive are highly prized. It falls short, no 
doubt, of the philosophical pliability of the 
Greek and of the scientific ductility of the 
German; but what is there in the whole field 
of human passion and human action that it 
cannot express with freedom and with a power 
all its own ? Turn Othello into German, or 
compare the verse of Shelley or of Keats with 
the graceful lines of some of their French con- 
temporaries, and learn the peculiar power of 
the English speech. In simple word or sono- 
rous phrase it is unequalled as a medium to 
reveal the thoughts, the feelings, and the 
ideals of humanity. 

One's hold upon the English tongue is meas- 
ured by his choice of words and by his use of 
idiom. The composite character of modern 
English offers a wide field for apt and happy 
choice of expression. The educated man, at 
home with his mother tongue, moves easily 
about in its Saxon, Romanic, and Latin ele- 
ments, and has gained by long experience and 
wide reading a knowledge of the mental in- 



106 FIVE EVIDENCES 

cidence of words as well as of their artistic 
effect. He is hampered by no set formulas, 
but manifests in his speech, spoken and written, 
the characteristic powers and appreciation of 
his nature. The educated man is of necessity, 
therefore, a constant reader of the best written 
English. He reads not for conscious imita- 
tion, but for unconscious absorption and re- 
flection. He knows the wide distinction be- 
tween correct English on the one hand, and 
pedantic, or, as it is sometimes called, "ele- 
gant," English on the other. He is more 
likely to "go to bed" than to "retire," to 
"get up" than to "arise," to have "legs" 
rather than "limbs," to "dress" than to 
"clothe himself," and to "make a speech" 
rather than to "deliver an oration." He 
knows that "if you hear poor English and read 
poor English, you will pretty surely speak poor 
English and write poor English," : and governs 
himself accordingly. He realizes the power 
and place of idiom and its relation to grammar, 
and shows his skill by preserving a balance 
between the two in his style. He would fol- 
low with intelligent sympathy the scholarly 
discussions of idiom and of grammar by Pro- 
fessor Earle 2 and would find therein the justi- 

1 White, Everyday English (Boston, 1880), p. 503. 

2 In his English Prose (London, 1890), c. 2, 7. 



manners 



OF AN EDUCATION 107 

fication of much of his best practise. In short, 
in his use of his mother tongue he would give 
sure evidence of an education. 

As a second evidence of an education I Refined and 
name those refined and gentle manners which gentle 
are the expression of fixed habits of thought 
and of action. "Manners are behavior and 
good breeding,'' as Addison said, but they are 
more. It is not without significance that the 
Latin language has but a single word (mores) 
both for usages, habits, manners, and for 
morals. Real manners, the manners of a 
truly educated man or woman, are an outward 
expression of intellectual and moral conviction. 
Sham manners are a veneer which falls away 
at the dampening touch of the first selfish sug- 
gestion. Manners have a moral significance, 
and find their basis in that true and deepest 
self-respect which is built upon respect for 
others. An infallible test of character is to 
be found in one's manners toward those whom, 
for one reason or another, the world may deem 
his inferiors. A man's manners toward his 
equals or his superiors are shaped by too 
many motives to render their interpretation 
either easy or certain. Manners do not make 
the man, but manners reveal the man. It is 
by the amount of respect, deference, and cour- 



108 FIVE EVIDENCES 

tesy shown to human personality as such that 
we judge whether one is on dress parade or 
whether he is so well-trained, well-educated, 
and so habitually ethical in thought and action 
that he realizes his proper relation to his fel- 
lows, and reveals his realization in his manners. 
As Kant insisted more than a century ago, a 
man exists as an end in himself, and not merely 
as a means to be arbitrarily used by this or 
that will; and in all his actions, whether they 
concern himself alone or other rational beings, 
he must always be regarded as an end. True 
manners are based upon a recognition of this 
fact, and that is a poor education indeed which 
fails to inculcate the ethical principle and the 
manners that embody it. 
The habit of As a third evidence of an education I name 
the power and habit of reflection. It is a fre- 
quent charge against us moderns, particularly 
against Americans, that we are losing the habit 
of reflection, and the high qualities which de- 
pend upon it. We are told that this loss is a 
necessary result of our hurried and busy lives, 
of our diverse interests, and of the annihilation 
of space and time by steam and ■ electricity. 
The whole world and its happenings are brought 
to our very doors by the daily newspaper. 
Our attention leaps from Manila to Pekin, 



reflection 



OF AN EDUCATION 109 

from Pekin to the Transvaal, and from the 
Transvaal to Havana. We are torn by con- 
flicting or unconnected emotions, and our minds 
are occupied by ideas following each other with 
such rapidity that we fail to get a firm and 
deep hold of any one of the great facts that 
come into our lives. This is the charge which 
even sympathetic critics bring against us. 

If it be true — and there are some counts in 
the indictment which it is difficult to deny — 
then one of the most precious evidences of an 
education is slipping from us, and we must 
redouble our efforts to keep fast hold upon it. 
For an unexamined life, as Socrates unceas- 
ingly insisted, is not worth living. The life 
which asks no questions of itself, which traces 
events back to no causes and forward to no 
purposes, which raises no vital issues of prin- 
ciple, and which seeks no interpretation of 
what passes within and without, is not a human 
life at all; it is the life of an animal. The 
trained and the untrained mind are perhaps 
in sharpest contrast at this very point. An 
armory of insights and convictions always 
ready for applications to new conditions, and 
invincible save by deeper insights and more 
rational convictions, is a mark of a trained 
and educated mind. The educated man has 



no FIVE EVIDENCES 

standards of truth, of human experience, and 
of wisdom by which new proposals are judged. 
These standards can be gained only through 
reflection. The undisciplined mind is a prey 
to every passing fancy and the victim of every 
plausible doctrinaire. He has no permanent 
forms of judgment which give him character. 

Renan was right when he held that the first 
condition for the development of the mind is 
that it shall have liberty; and liberty for the 
mind means freedom from the control of the 
unreasonable, and freedom to choose the rea- 
sonable in accordance with principle. A body 
of principles is a necessary possession of the 
educated man. His development is always 
with reference to his principles, and proceeds 
by evolution, not revolution. 

Philosophy is, of course, the great single 
study by which the power of reflection is de- 
veloped until it becomes a habit, but there is 
a philosophic study of literature, of politics, of 
natural science, which makes for the same end. 
The question how, whose answer is science, 
and the question why, whose answer is phi- 
losophy, are the beginnings of reflection. A 
truly educated man asks both questions con- 
tinually, and as a result is habituated to re- 
flection. 



OF AN EDUCATION in 

As a fourth evidence of an education I name The power 
the power of growth. There is a type of mind t0 grow 
which, when trained to a certain point, crystal- 
lizes, as it were, and refuses to move forward 
thereafter. This type of mind fails to give one 
of the essential evidences of an education. It 
has perhaps acquired much and promised much; 
but somehow or other the promise is not ful- 
filled. It is not dead, but in a trance. Only 
such functions are performed as serve to keep 
it where it is; there is no movement, no devel- 
opment, no new power or accomplishment. 
The impulse to continuous study, and to that 
self-education which are the conditions of 
permanent intellectual growth, is wanting. 
Education has so far failed of one of its chief 
purposes. 

A human mind continuing to grow and to 
develop throughout a long life is a splendid 
and impressive sight. It was that character- 
istic in Mr. Gladstone which made his per- 
sonality so attractive to young and ambitious 
men. They were fired by his zeal and inspired 
by his limitless intellectual energy. To have 
passed from being "the rising hope of the stern 
and unbending Tories" in 1838 to the unchal- 
lenged leadership of the anti-Tory party in 
Great Britain a generation later, and to have 



ii2 FIVE EVIDENCES 

continued to grow throughout an exception- 
ally long life is no mean distinction; and it is 
an example of what, in less conspicuous ways, 
is the lot of every mind whose training is ef- 
fective. Broadened views, widened sympathies, 
deepened insights are the accompaniments of 
growth. 

For this growth a many-sided interest is 
necessary, and this is why growth and intel- 
lectual and moral narrowness are eternally at 
war. There is much in our modern education 
which is uneducational because it makes growth 
difficult, if not impossible. Early specializa- 
tion, with its attendant limited range both of 
information and of interest, is an enemy of 
growth. Turning from the distasteful before 
it is understood is an enemy of growth. Fail- 
ure to see the relation of the subject of one's 
special interest to other subjects is an enemy of 
growth. The pretense of investigation and 
discovery before mastering existent knowledge 
is an enemy of growth. The habit of cynical 
indifference toward men and things and of 
aloofness from them, sometimes supposed to 
be peculiarly academic, is an enemy of growth. 
These, then, are all to be shunned while formal 
education is going on, if it is to carry with it 
the priceless gift of an impulse to continuous 



OF AN EDUCATION 113 

growth. "Life," says Bishop Spalding in an 
eloquent passage, 1 "is the unfolding of a mys- 
terious power, which in man rises to self- 
consciousness, and through self-consciousness 
to the knowledge of a world of truth and order 
and love, where action may no longer be left 
wholly to the sway of matter or to the impulse 
of instinct, but may and should be controlled 
by reason and conscience. To further this 
process by deliberate and intelligent effort is to 
educate" — and, I add, to educate so as to sow 
the seed of continuous growth, intellectual and 
moral. 

And as a fifth evidence of an education I The power 
name efficiency — the power to do. The time 
has long since gone by, if it ever was, when 
contemplation pure and simple, withdrawal 
from the world and its activities, or intelligent 
incompetence was a defensible ideal of educa- 
tion. To-day the truly educated man must 
be, in some sense, efficient. With brain, 
tongue, or hand he must be able to express his 
knowledge, and so leave the world other than 
he found it. Mr. James is simply summing 
up what physiology and psychology both teach 
when he exclaims: "No reception without re- 
action, no impression without correlative ex- 

1 Means and Ends of Education (Chicago, 1895), p. 72. 



ii4 FIVE EVIDENCES 

pression — this is the great maxim which the 
teacher ought never to forget. An impression 
which simply flows in at the pupil's eyes or 
ears, and in no way modifies his active life, 
is an impression gone to waste. It is physi- 
ologically incomplete. It leaves no fruits be- 
hind it in the way of capacity acquired. Even 
as mere impression, it fails to produce its 
proper effect upon the memory; for, to re- 
main fully among the acquisitions of the latter 
faculty, it must be wrought into the whole 
cycle of our operations. Its motor conse- 
quences are what clinch it." * This is just as 
true of knowledge in general as of impressions. 
Indefinite absorption without production is 
fatal both to character and to the highest 
intellectual power. Do something and be able 
to do it well; express what you know in some 
helpful and substantial form; produce, and 
do not everlastingly feel only and revel in feel- 
ings — these are counsels which make for a real 
education and against that sham form of it 
which is easily recognized as well-informed in- 
capacity. Our colleges and universities abound 
in false notions, notions as unscientific as they 
are unphilosophical, of the supposed value of 
knowledge, information, for its own sake. It 

1 Talks to Teachers on Psychology (New York, 1899), p. 33. 



OF AN EDUCATION 115 

has none. The date of the discovery of America 
is in itself as meaningless as the date of the 
birth of the youngest blade of grass in the 
neighboring field; it means something because 
it is part of a larger knowledge-whole, because 
it has relations, applications, uses; and for 
the student who sees none of these and knows 
none of them, America was discovered in 1249 
quite as much as it was in 1492. 

High efficiency is primarily an intellectual 
affair, and only Ion go intervallo does it take on 
anything approaching a mechanical form. Its 
mechanical form is always wholly subordinate 
to its springs in the intellect. It is the out- 
growth of an established and habitual relation- 
ship between intellect and will, by means of 
which knowledge is constantly made power. 
For knowledge is not power, Bacon to the 
contrary notwithstanding, unless it is made 
so, and it can be made so only by him who 
possesses the knowledge. The habit of making 
knowledge power is efficiency. Without it 
education is incomplete. 



These five characteristics, then, I offer as Five 
evidences of an education — correctness and pre- c ^f a 

r of th< 

cision in the use of the mother tongue; refined educ* 
and gentle manners, which are the expression 



n6 FIVE EVIDENCES 

of fixed habits of thought and action; the power 
and habit of reflection; the power of growth; 
and efficiency, or the power to do. On this 
plane the physicist may meet with the philo- 
logian, and the naturalist with the philosopher, 
and each recognize the fact that his fellow is 
an educated man, though the range of their 
information is widely different, and the centres 
of their highest interests are far apart. They 
are knit together in a brotherhood by the close 
tie of those traits which have sprung out of 
the reaction of their minds and wills upon that 
which has fed them and brought them strength. 
Without these traits men are not truly educated 
and their erudition, however vast, is of no 
avail; it furnishes a museum, not a developed 
human being. 

It is these habits, of necessity made by our- 
selves alone, begun in the days of school and 
college, and strengthened with maturer years 
and broader experience, that serve to show to 
ourselves and to others that we have discovered 
the secret of gaining an education. 



VI 



TRAINING FOR VOCATION AND FOR 
AVOCATION 



Based upon an article written for the New York Times, 
September 19, 1908 



TRAINING FOR VOCATION AND FOR 
AVOCATION 

The swing of the educational pendulum has 
now brought training for vocations — that is, 
for industries, callings, or professions — to the 
forefront of present-day interest and discus- 
sion. The familiar opposition between voca- 
tion and culture is heavily emphasized and 
falsely interpreted. Paradoxes without num- 
ber are paraded as axioms. Liberal learning, 
itself a sure claim to immortality for any na- 
tion that cultivates it, is made light of; and 
in the heat of debate the higher usefulness is 
held to be subordinate to the lower. 

The precise relation between training for 
vocation and liberal learning merits examina- 
tion, however brief. 

It needs no profound philosophy to tell us Labor and 
that if any one is to live, some one must work. eisure 
Human life is an economic, as well as a physi- 
ologic, fact. Moreover, the history of the 
human race makes it plain that progress in 
civilization is measured by the use that man 
makes of his higher, or reflective and creative, 
119 



120 TRAINING FOR VOCATION 

powers. It is what he does in literature, in 
art, in government, in science and its applica- 
tions that carries man forward in his own 
esteem. One concludes, therefore, that the 
purpose of a vocation is to gain time for avo- 
cation; that the aim of labor is leisure. The 
things that our labor produces would not in- 
terest us indefinitely, or perhaps greatly, if 
they were not exchangeable for leisure or if 
they did not contribute to the enjoyment of 
leisure. 

In a hard-and-fast social and political system, 
men are more or less permanently divided into 
groups or castes, living and moving in differ- 
ent and separate planes. One grandfather, 
father, and son work at the same occupation, 
perhaps in one and the same place; another 
grandfather, father, and son enjoy ample lei- 
sure, perhaps under substantially unchanged 
conditions. This state of affairs is unfamiliar 
to our American democracy, and it is foreign 
to our habits of thinking. We do not ask a 
man to stay where he is, but rather to try to 
rise as high as he can go. We do not ask him 
to provide an economic basis for some one 
else's leisure, for the exercise of some one else's 
powers of reflection and of creation; but for 
his own. Therefore, in providing a system of 



AND FOR AVOCATION 121 

formal training adequate to our nation's needs 
and hopes, we must not assume that any given 
youth is forever to be shut out from leisure 
and its enjoyments; we must on the contrary 
show him how leisure is gained and how 
worthily enjoyed, and set him on the way to 
gain and to enjoy it. 

One other elementary principle is of impor- Hand and 
tance. The manual industries, as well as the eyetrammg 
fine and the useful arts imply, for their suc- 
cessful prosecution, co-ordination and co-opera- 
tion of eye and hand, and a certain amount 
of trained dexterity. The training of the motor 
powers which are involved in developing these 
processes is itself an essential part of a sound 
general training, as it is training in one or 
more of the forms of expression. For, of 
course, thought may be expressed by drawing, 
by painting, or by making, as well as by lan- 
guage. In other words, hand or manual train- 
ing has an intellectual reaction, if properly 
planned and interpreted. These facts mean 
that certain acts or stages of motor training 
are useful both as training for vocation and as 
training for avocation. 

The fundamental truths that have been very 
briefly stated are easily applied to our Ameri- 
can educational problem. 



122 



TRAINING FOR VOCATION 



Vocational 

training 

follows 

elementary 

instruction 



The American youth should be taught, 
whenever and so far as possible, to enter into 
and take hold of American life at a given point. 
Training for vocation will provide the "given 
point," but it must not be postponed to an 
age when only a handful of children will be 
able to profit by it. 

Vocational training ought not to be included 
in the six years that are sufficient for the ele- 
mentary-school course, properly so-called. The 
child is then too young to enter wisely and 
economically upon vocational training, and, 
moreover, every hour of his school life is needed 
for instruction in the use of the elemental tools 
and facts of civilization. He can, however, 
and should, then receive that preliminary 
training of his motor or expressive powers 
which, as has already been pointed out, is 
useful afterward to build a vocational train- 
ing upon. 

When once the six-year elementary- school 
course is completed, however, then vocational 
training should be given its place. While 
every possible avenue of advance should be 
kept open for the boy or girl who looks forward 
to completing a general secondary-school course, 
or to entering a college, vocational training 
should be provided for the vastly larger num- 



AND FOR AVOCATION 123 

ber who have no such purpose. They should 
be able to get the whole of a training intended 
for themselves, and not merely part of a train- 
ing intended for some one else. 

This vocational training will, if wisely or- Special 
ganized, take on two distinct forms. There ^coiT 
will be special secondary schools of two, three, 
or four year courses for those boys and girls 
who are able to give their full time to school 
work and who choose one of these vocational 
secondary schools in preference to the general 
secondary- school course. There will also be 
continuation schools, with evening instruction, 
for those children who are compelled to be- 
come wage-earners as soon as the compulsory- 
education and child-labor laws will permit 
them to do so. 

It is important that these schools be genu- 
ine vocational schools and not merely schools 
with a smattering of vocational instruction. 
Training for vocation is a necessary part of 
education, and it must be done thoroughly. 
The more completely the vocational schools 
are adapted to workshops, and the more com- 
pletely their organization and discipline con- 
form to workshop conditions, the better. It 
is vital, too, that principles be taught with 
processes, and illustrated by them; for the 



124 



TRAINING FOR VOCATION 



Vocational 
training and 
liberal 
learning 



boy or girl who understands the principles 
underlying a given process, will be the most 
likely to rise to a position of superintendence 
or control. The German people have kept this 
point well in mind in developing their admira- 
ble vocational schools, and they are already 
reaping the practical advantages of it both as 
a nation and as individual workers. 

Both in the elementary and in the voca- 
tional schools, the teacher's duty is to sow the 
seed of ambition to participate in and to en- 
joy the intellectual life, and to keep insisting 
that there is a higher aim than industrial skill 
or success, for which those are to prepare the 
way. Through response to this stimulus, the 
individual pupil must do for himself what he 
can by reading, by conversation, and by study 
and love of the great public collections of art, 
history, and science which the museums of 
the large cities are rapidly bringing together 
for the benefit and enjoyment of the public. 

It is a grave error, therefore, and one which 
gives rise to many misconceptions and many 
mistakes of judgment, to set vocational train- 
ing and liberal learning in sharp antagonism 
to each other. The purpose of the former is 
to pave the way to some appreciation of the 
latter and to provide an economic basis for 



AND FOR A VOCA TION 1 2 5 

it to rest upon. The equally grave error of 
the past has been to frame a school course 
on the hypothesis that every pupil was to go 
forward in the most deliberate and amplest 
fashion to the study of the products of the 
intellectual life, regardless of the basis of his 
own economic support. 

Something might be said, too, about the de- 
sirability of work for work's sake, because of 
its ethical value, and about the unwisdom of 
permitting the children of the well-to-do to 
escape the discipline and the advantage of 
labor, intellectual or physical. 

The younger generation shows many signs True 
of being too impatient to prepare for life. The 
old notion that a child should be so trained as 
to have the fullest and most complete posses- 
sion of its faculties and its competences, in 
order to rise in efficiency, to gain larger re- 
wards, and to render more complete service, 
is too often pushed aside by the new notion 
that it is quite enough if a child is trained in 
some aptitude to enable it to stay where it 
first finds itself. Of course, under the guise of 
progress, this is retrogression. Carried to its 
logical result, it would mean a static and a 
stratified social order. It would put an end 
to individual initiative and to individual op- 



vocational 
preparation 



126 



TRAINING FOR VOCATION 



The Oxford 
training 



Discipline 

and 

self-discipline 



portunity. It is not difficult to foretell what 
results would follow both to civilization and 
to social order and comfort. The basis for 
any true vocational preparation is training to 
know a few things well and thoroughly, and 
in gaining such knowledge to form those habits 
of mind and of will that fit the individual to 
meet new duties and unforeseen emergencies. 
This is the real reason why the traditional 
training given at the University of Oxford has 
produced such stupendous results for genera- 
tions. Of course, the Oxford training has had, 
to some extent at least, selected material to 
work upon; but it has done its work amazingly 
well. Whether in statesmanship or at the bar 
or in the army or in diplomacy or in large 
administrative undertakings in business, the 
man trained at Oxford has won first place by 
reason of the character and quality of his per- 
formance. No such result has been obtained, 
and no such result need be expected, from a 
school and college training which is a quick 
smattering of many things. At the bottom 
of the educational process lies discipline, and 
the purpose of discipline is to develop the power 
of self-discipline. When discipline is with- 
drawn, dawdling quickly enters, and the habit 
of dawdling is as corrupting to the intellect as 



AND FOR AVOCATION 127 

it is to the morals. The patience to be thor- 
ough, the concentration to understand, and 
the persistence to grasp and to apply, are three 
traits that very clearly mark off the truly edu- 
cated and disciplined man from his uneducated 
and undisciplined fellow, and they are pre- 
cisely the three traits which are most over- 
looked and neglected in the modern school 
and college curriculum. A school is supposed 
to be modern and progressive if it offers some- 
thing new, regardless of the fact that this some- 
thing new may be not only useless, but harm- 
ful, as an educational instrument. 

With the growth of democracy the need for 
self-discipline becomes not less, but far greater. 
When great bodies of men were controlled by 
power from without, then they were in so far 
disciplined; now that in all parts of the world 
men are shaping their own collective action 
without let or hindrance, the need for self- 
discipline is many times greater than it ever 
was before. In an older civilization self-dis- 
cipline was necessary for the protection of 
individual character; to-day it is necessary 
for the protection of society and all its huge 
interests. 

Too much slovenly reading, particularly of 
newspapers and of magazines, but also of 



128 TRAINING FOR VOCATION 

worthless books, stands in the way of educa- 
tion and enlightenment. In no field of human 
interest is the substitution of quantity for 
quality more fraught with damage and dis- 
order than in that of reading. The builders 
of the Constitution of the United States and 
the great lawyers of the colonial and early 
national period knew but few books, but the 
books that they knew were first-rate books and 
they knew them well. Nothing contributed 
so much to the fulness of their minds, to the 
keenness of their intellects, or to the lasting 
character of the institutions that they built, 
as their reflective grasp on a few great books 
and on the principles and literary standards 
which those books taught and exemplified. 
Such a task as that which Gibbon set himself 
over a century ago would be impossible to-day, 
even for a syndicate of Gibbons. There are 
too many books now to enable another His- 
tory of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire 
to be composed. Productivity of the highest 
type is checked by the excess of facilities. 
This is true both of books and of physical 
apparatus. We could get along well with far 
fewer books and far less apparatus, and we 
should be likely to get more ideas and a higher 
type of human being. 



AND FOR AVOCATION 129 

What has been said relates chiefly, or most 
directly, to the advantage of the individual 
who receives the training. The interest of the 
community, of the nation as a whole, in voca- 
tional training is no less great and no less direct. 
Thus far, the American people have prospered 
greatly because of the enormous natural re- 
sources spread out before them. This condi- 
tion is now coming to an end. Hereafter, 
waste must give way to thrift, and rough guess- 
work to careful planning. This means that 
trained industrial skill is a factor in the nation's 
prosperity. To escape from what Bismarck 
once called "the educated proletariat " we 
must have a care that those who gain leisure, 
or have it given to them, unite with it a ca- 
pacity for skilled labor. Avocations need vo- 
cations to keep them from harm. 



VII 
STANDARDS 



An address before the Girls' Club of St. Bartholomew's 
Parish, New York, February I, 1909 



STANDARDS 

In a great city like New York, where popu- importance 
lation is counted by the million, and in this ?*?** t 

J 7 individual 

huge country, where we habitually think and 
speak in terms of nine and ten figures, it is 
very easy to lose sight of the fact that after 
all the most important thing in the world is 
the intelligent, well-balanced, high-minded in- 
dividual human being. When one reads and 
talks and hears lectures and discussions now- 
adays on ways in which the world is going 
to be improved, he finds himself usually con- 
fronted with a formula, or a law, or a principle 
of some kind which is expected to bring about 
the desired improvement. One gets the im- 
pression somehow or other from all this that 
you and I as individuals have nothing left to 
do, but that everything is going to be done 
for us by the government — by the legislature, 
by the Congress, by the courts — or by some 
new way of controlling business, or by some 
new mode of distributing wealth, and all the 
rest of the dismal and familiar jargon of the 
day. But the more you think about it and the 

T-33 



i 3 4 STANDARDS 

longer you look at your own individual world 
and life and what goes on in it every day — 
the mere struggle for existence even — the more 
carefully you reflect on what influences and 
directs and compels you, the more clearly will 
you see that there is no escape from the indi- 
vidual responsibility which rests on each one 
of us. The only way in which things can be 
made more nearly as they should be in this 
city, in this nation, in this world, is by our 
individually making them so. It cannot be 
done by passing laws, however good. It can- 
not be done by the action of the board of alder- 
men. It cannot be done by the action of the 
legislature. It cannot be done even through 
new societies and organizations, or by new so- 
cial projects, or political schemes. Through 
you and me in our daily lives whatever is to 
be done must be done. We have each of us 
to lift our share of the load, and that share 
consists always primarily of our own selves. 

It is highly important that we should give 
close and constant attention to the standards 
that we set before ourselves; the standards 
by which we measure and test what we do 
and plan to do every day of our lives. 
The setting of We sometimes forget what an important 
thing a standard is, how precious it is, how 



standards 



STANDARDS 135 

carefully it is to be determined and looked 
after. Have you ever stopped to reflect that 
when you speak of a standard of weight, like 
a pound, or a standard of length, like a yard, 
you are speaking about something that the 
governments of the world have spent great 
amounts of money to determine, and when 
determined to keep just and accurate ? When 
you buy or sell a pound of sugar, or when you 
buy or sell a yard of cloth, you use a term that 
is so familiar that you probably never stop to 
think that in Philadelphia at the United States 
Mint, in Washington at the Bureau of Stand- 
ards, in London, in Paris, in Berlin, and in 
the other great capitals of the world, these 
and other similar standards are kept under 
glass where no one can touch them. They 
are kept at an even temperature, because if 
it grows hot they are altered by expansion, 
and if it grows cold they are altered by con- 
traction. These standards are preserved under 
the most careful supervision, in order that 
somewhere in the world there may be a fixed 
measure to go to in time of doubt or difference 
of opinion or dispute. In a shop you measure 
a yard of cloth in a hurry and you do it pretty 
accurately; you do not miss the full or exact 
yard by very much. You put a pound of 



136 



STANDARDS 



Standards of 

personal 

conduct 



sugar on the scales and weigh it; you do not 
miss the precise weight by very much. Your 
results in both cases are reasonably accurate 
and will do for all practical purposes. But 
somewhere in the world there must be a stand- 
ard that is not only pretty accurate, but ab- 
solutely accurate. That standard is the yard, 
or the pound, that we have in mind when we 
talk about the standards of weight and meas- 
urement, and not the approximations to these 
which we make in daily life. 

If governments and civilized men generally 
think it worth while to take such pains and go 
to such trouble and expense to find out proper 
standards of weight and measurement, and to 
keep them where dust and heat and cold can- 
not affect them, in order that they may be 
really standard, what are we to think about 
our standards — those that we set up to test 
ourselves by, in order that we may know 
whether we are doing the whole of that which 
we ought to do ? 

The full effect of this question can be made 
clear by a few illustrations taken from daily 
life. One cannot help noticing what wretch- 
edly poor and incorrect and vulgar English is 
spoken by children coming from school, chil- 
dren that in the classroom will speak with al- 



STANDARDS 137 

most pedantic accuracy and grammatical cor- 
rectness. Those very same boys and girls 
when they come out on the street to play forget 
the standards to which they conform in school, 
and the passer-by hears a form of speech which 
bears no resemblance to that used in the 
presence of the teacher. On the street the 
child uses the form of speech which it is cus- 
tomary for him to hear from his companions 
and at home. The lesson of this observation 
is that it is not much use to have theoretical 
standards if one is constantly in association 
with influences that pull them down, that de- 
part from or contradict them. We act and 
speak chiefly through imitation. We do and 
say the things that we see and hear done and 
said. Therefore, our associations determine in 
very considerable measure what sort of acts 
we do and what sort of words we use, even 
though we have a standard laid away some- 
where that is out of the reach of dust and heat 
and cold, but yet a standard that does not 
shape and affect our daily lives. 

The surest test as to whether a human being 
is civilized or not is the way in which that 
human being acts and expresses himself. It 
is of the highest degree of importance that 
men should have truly civilized standards of 



138 STANDARDS 

action and truly civilized standards of expres- 
sion, even though we depart from them tem- 
porarily through forgetfulness or carelessness 
— standards to which we try to repair when- 
ever we stop to think about what we are doing 
and saying. We have all of us been taught, 
even those who have been at school for the 
shortest period, the simple, elementary rules 
governing our English speech. Yet how many 
of us, knowing those rules, from force of habit, 
through association, or because of bad example, 
depart from them and habitually use the most 
extraordinary, ungrammatical, inaccurate, and 
incorrect expressions ? 
Bad habits As one goes about in crowded places, a very 

o speec common expression to meet the ear is this: 

"I says to him, says I." This is an expres- 
sion that no human being would ever use if 
his ears really heard it. It is only because the 
speaker does not really hear it, does not know 
when he is using it, that he departs so entirely 
from the ordinary standards observed in our 
daily speech. A great many persons seem to 
think that correctness of speech is a matter of 
individual temperament, and that it is apt to 
accompany certain lackadaisical characteristics 
of manner. The truth is quite the contrary to 
this. Few things so completely reveal the kind 



STANDARDS 139 

of person one is as the sort of speech he uses. 
One need not use the speech of the formal 
lecturer; one need not use the long, involved 
words and phrases which sometimes mark the 
writing even of reputable authors; but any 
one who listens and who understands what he 
says and hears, who thinks and speaks with 
simple correctness and dignity, without affec- 
tation, without straining for effect, and espe- 
cially without imitating the newspapers — that 
person is applying a standard of speech which 
indicates an advanced stage of civilization. 

In a very few days this whole nation will Lincoln's 
celebrate with appropriate exercises the one ng s 
hundredth anniversary of the birth of Abra- 
ham Lincoln, the greatest personality that ever 
lived on this continent. An extraordinary 
thing about that man is that, born in squalor 
and brought up in poverty — such poverty as 
probably no one of us has ever known or ap- 
proximated, no matter how hard our conditions 
may have been — sent to school for the fewest 
possible number of days, yet he delivered some 
of the greatest orations in the English language. 
Some of the most splendid, simple, and direct 
English that we know was the English of 
Abraham Lincoln. Where did he get it ? He 
got it just where others can get it, from his 



140 STANDARDS 

very simple and direct nature that reflected 
without guile and without complexity the im- 
pressions and convictions that he had. His 
style was influenced largely by three books, 
the English Bible, Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, 
and Aesop's Fables. I suppose that there are 
not in existence three better books to read 
than those. Quite apart from any message 
that they contain, if we desire to get a standard 
of English speech that will be simple, correct, 
and dignified, they may well be our model. 
The noble English of our Bible, the simple nar- 
rative English of John Bunyan's Pilgrim s 
Progress, and the vigorous and direct English 
into which Aesop's Fables were turned were the 
source of Abraham Lincoln's English. They 
can be the source and the standard of the Eng- 
lish of millions of others as well. 
Newspaper No one who writes and speaks of pure Eng- 

lish can pass by the influence of the modern 
newspaper. It is hard to estimate with accu- 
racy the probable damage that it does every 
day to our standards of speech and taste and 
appreciation. Even to look at the front page 
of some widely circulated newspapers is to in- 
sure a moral and aesthetic disturbance. We buy 
them for one cent in the morning, and again 
for one cent at night. We have always before 



English 



STANDARDS 141 

us their extravagant, vulgar, shrieking head- 
lines in large capital letters and bad English, 
which try to seize us by the collar and to hold 
our attention, while at the very same moment 
they are undermining every principle and stand- 
ard of speech to which we ought to hold fast. 
One wonders sometimes how a great popula- 
tion like that of America manages to stand 
those daily and twice daily assaults upon its 
standards. We must learn to protect ourselves 
against that sort of thing, and the only way 
in which we can do it is resolutely to turn our 
attention and interest toward something else; 
toward something that is really worth while, 
and that enters with more genuine value into 
our daily life, and to seek the companionship 
and counsel of those few newspapers that 
really have standards and try to enforce them. 

We are surrounded now by objects which influence of 
reflect and are examples of sound, permanent sur ™ un ^ m g s 

r ' r on standards 

standards of taste. The whole face of Ameri- 
can cities has changed in a generation. Almost 
all of this new and splendid architectural work 
and decoration which we see about us has been 
done in the last twenty or twenty-five years. 
Each one of these stately and beautiful objects 
makes a direct appeal to you and to me through 
our taste, our judgment, and our standards of 



142 



STANDARDS 



Selfishness 

versus 

standards 



appreciation. When we stop to look at one 
of these beautiful modern buildings, whether 
it is a great library, or a university building, 
or a great hotel, or a well-designed apartment- 
house or department store, we are in the 
presence of something that really represents 
civilization, and something that we may well 
be glad to reflect upon and try to understand 
and enjoy as part of our appreciation of what 
we see as we go through these crowded and 
busy streets. We forget how much of the 
time people are looking elsewhere for some- 
thing that is right before their faces. The 
commonplace and the familiar will usually 
reveal to each one of us that of which we are 
in search, if we only have patience to observe 
and to reflect upon our observation. 

It is very easy to misinterpret and to be 
flippant about familiar things that reveal our 
standards or lack of them. There is an amus- 
ing story which illustrates this. A teacher 
trying to teach a class of boys something about 
good manners and morals endeavored to be 
very practical in his work. He therefore 
asked one of the students before him this 
question: "Suppose that you should enter a 
street-car at the same time with three women, 
and there was only one vacant seat, and you 



STANDARDS 143 

rushed forward and took that seat, what would 
you call that?" The teacher was trying to 
show how easy it was to be selfish, and how 
easy it was to recognize selfishness in some of 
its commonplace forms. But he was discon- 
certed when his pupil very promptly answered: 
"I should call that presence of mind." The 
boy was not thinking of what his teacher was 
trying to illustrate to him, what courtesy is, 
what good manners are and unselfishness. He 
was only thinking what his act would get for 
him, namely, a comfortable seat. That is 
usually the trouble when we set about apply- 
ing standards of conduct. We generally want 
them applied by some one else. A very dis- 
tinguished statesman said not long ago that it 
is becoming the ruling passion of the American 
people to give advice to others, to mind other 
people's business. There is more truth than 
fiction in that. We can always get advice as 
to how to mind our business, but we do not 
often get principles and rules set before us 
that will teach us how best to manage ourselves. 
The average man does not stop to think 
about this matter of standards nearly as much 
as he ought to. If it seems worth while to 
the government to spend tens of thousands of 
dollars to find out what a yard actually is, 



i 4 4 STANDARDS 

and what a pound actually is, and then to 
keep the standard yard and the standard 
pound where nothing can happen to them, 
how much more worth while ought it to be 
for us to find out what our standards of speech, 
taste, and conduct ought to be, and to keep 
them where no harm can come to them ? The 
great trouble is, especially in this modern life, 
where we live lives that are so full, where we 
are so terribly driven to get the day's work 
done, to make a living, that when a moment 
of leisure really comes, so many different things 
appeal to us to distract our attention and to 
press us this way or that, it is very difficult 
for us to learn to know even a few standards 
and to apply them. 

There is no greater need in American life 
than for the steady, persistent application of 
sound standards in our individual lives. The 
average human being comes into the world 
and moves through it for a short space of time 
very much as a little chip may be seen floating 
on a swiftly moving stream. It is borne on, 
it is tossed about, but at last it comes to smooth 
water and rests there; not by reason of any 
act of its own, but by reason of the action of 
the stream on which it is borne. Most of us 
are borne helplessly along the rapidly moving 



STANDARDS 145 

stream of life in similar fashion. Whenever a 
man or woman appears with strength and 
character and general intelligence and ability 
enough to guide and direct his or her own 
movements, we recognize the presence of a 
strong personality and a great leader. The 
whole world looks at such a person with 
admiration. 

There are a few real leaders in the world, Self-mastery 
and these leaders who have power, whether it 
be in the realm of thought, in literature, in 
science, in government, or in the conduct of 
daily life, we naturally turn to and regard 
with enthusiasm and reverence, because human 
leadership is a very fine and splendid thing. 
While great leadership and distinction may 
readily be denied to most, nobody can deny 
another the privilege and the opportunity of 
seeking to know and to apply the best stand- 
ards to himself. There is one nature and one 
mind and one set of actions that each one of 
us can lead and direct. There is one person 
of whom we can take control. Slowly and 
gradually we can bring that person to give up 
mere imitation and artificiality and conform 
his conduct more and more to standards of 
his own choosing. We can determine whether 
those standards shall be good and high, or 



146 STANDARDS 

whether they shall be common and low. For- 
tunately, nobody has ever tried to organize 
society on the lowest and meanest estimates 
of human nature. We are always thinking 
that the world is going to be better, that we 
are going to improve, and that the march of 
progress is up and not down. 
Self- If it were in my power to prescribe effect- 

improvement ively for the betterment of this city and 

country, I would at once ask of each indi- 
vidual three very simple things, and three 
things which every individual has it in his 
power to accomplish. I would ask him to 
improve his speech, to improve his manners, 
and to improve his standards of taste and 
appreciation. 

You cannot tell from a person's occupation 
what sort of a man he is. One's occupation 
is not always a matter of his own choice. We 
take such work as we can get, and not always 
the work that we most like. On the other hand, 
you can always estimate a human being from 
the use he makes of his leisure. When one has 
a leisure moment, such as a half-holiday or a 
holiday, then he does the thing he most wants 
to do, or that he is most inclined to. The real 
tendencies and standards of a human being 
are clearly revealed by the use of his leisure. 



STANDARDS 147 

So in choosing standards of speech, stand- 
ards of personal manners and conduct, stand- 
ards of taste and appreciation, one must watch 
carefully the use that he makes of his leisure, 
his spare time — those moments or days that 
occasionally come to us when we can do as 
we please. Then it is that we reveal ourselves 
according to our natural tastes; then it is 
that those who observe us can tell what our 
standards really are. Standards are not wholly 
things of stone, or bronze, or silver, or gold, 
but are more often unseen things, like ideas. 
Nobody has ever seen an idea, or felt one, or 
held one in his hand; but in the whole world 
there is nothing so powerful as an idea. The 
ideas which pass through the human mind all 
have tendencies to influence our movements, 
and we need to be very careful as to the ideas 
we allow habitually to occupy our minds, for 
these ideas influence the acts which reveal our 
standards. 

The little things by which we shape our 
daily life are the things by which our char- 
acter is at once revealed and tested. Not one 
person in a hundred thousand is going to be 
recorded or written about in history, even 
ephemeral history. This fact should not be 
allowed to make any difference in our indi- 



148 STANDARDS 

vidual lives. It is each human mind and soul 
that counts, whether conspicuous or not. Some 
lives may be more conspicuous than others, 
more eminent, more generally serviceable, but 
for all that they cannot take the place of the 
one life which is intrusted to each one of us. 
We make and choose the standards for our 
own lives, and we must both apply them and 
be held responsible for them. 



VIII 
WASTE IN EDUCATION 



An article written for The Outlook, New York, 
August 6, 1898 



WASTE IN EDUCATION 

An intelligent parent, who cares about edu- 
cation, and who thinks about it, told me not 
long ago that his boy of fourteen and a half 
years was in rude health and ready to pass the 
Columbia College entrance examinations. He 
expressly disclaimed the idea that the boy had 
unusual ability or power of application, and 
attributed the result solely to the fact that his 
son's education up to this point had been care- 
fully planned. On the other hand, an assist- 
ant superintendent of schools in New York 
has recently stated that he frequently finds 
pupils of seventeen or eighteen in the upper 
grades of the elementary schools. It is ob- 
vious that their education had not been planned. 
Lack of plan, bad plan, stupid plan, ignorance 
in plan — these are the causes of the waste in 
education that is so frightful in the United 
States. 

A plan for a child's education may or may Rigid system 

not involve much system. To identify a plan 

with a highly organized and wasteful system 

is one of the blunders most commonly made. 

151 



a cause of 



152 WASTE IN EDUCATION 

Detailed systems are usually wasteful when 
rigidly administered, because, in the anxiety 
to make them symmetrical and to have them 
look well, their administrators lose all sense of 
proportion. If a child, on mastering the words 
given on the first twenty pages of his Second 
Reader, is able, with a little help, to read in- 
telligently in the Third Reader or even in the 
Fourth — and not a few children are able to do 
this — it is both wasteful and a form of fetish- 
worship to keep him dragging through the 
intervening pages. Nowadays the less that 
children see of Third Readers and Fourth 
Readers the better; but the illustration holds. 
Boys who go to college at eighteen have, as a 
rule, spent from one-sixth to one-fourth of 
their entire school life in studying mathematics. 
Yet they know very little mathematics; what 
they do know they usually know very imper- 
fectly. They have wasted untold months, 
perhaps years. The mathematics superstition 
is still very strong in this country, although 
its influence is visibly diminishing. Mathe- 
matics is commonly thought to be more " prac- 
tical" than literature, or science, or history, 
which is not true; and to be an unrivalled 
training for the reasoning powers, which is 
easily disproved. Mathematics has an indis- 



WASTE IN EDUCATION 153 

pensable place in education, of course, but 
that place is a much more subordinate one 
than it has been in the habit of occupying in 
America. It is, as now administered, a very 
wasteful subject of instruction, and more than 
any other it impedes the improvement of the 
average course of study. The child first "goes 
through" a primary, or elementary, arithmetic; 
then he "goes through" an advanced arith- 
metic, devoting more than half his time to the 
identical topics contained in his former text- 
book. This is simple waste, of course. The 
problem of the arrested development of chil- 
dren, which is the most fruitful field of investiga- 
tion that lies before the child-study specialists, 
is bound to engage more and more attention; 
and I am of opinion that the closer we get 
to it the more clearly will it appear that math- 
ematics, as it is taught, is a chief offender. 
I am familiar with a public-school system in 
which much time is given to mathematics. 
The elementary-school children study it for 
many hours each week. Those of them who 
get into the high school keep at it with the 
same devotion and energy, and study pretty 
much the same subjects as they did when in 
the elementary schools. When the brightest 
high-school graduates pass over into the city 



a child's 
education 



154 WASTE IN EDUCATION 

training class to fit themselves to teach, the 
asking of three questions is often sufficient to 
prove that they do not know any mathematics, 
that they have not the dimmest idea of what 
it is all about, and that its boasted power of 
logical training has been wholly lost on them. 
What it has done is to keep them from learning 
something else. So they are taught the same 
mathematics again. This is not an isolated, 
but a fairly typical, instance of what is going 
on all over this country. 
How to plan To plan intelligently for a child's education 
means to keep him constantly at something 
that is new and something that is real to him, 
something that is adapted to his capacity and 
related to what he already knows. It is to 
make a plan for a particular child; but it may 
involve grave error to copy it exactly for his 
brothers or sisters or cousins or friends. It is 
to make a plan that aims to discover and to 
develop capacity, no matter how young the 
child may be. Whatever the variations in 
detail, literature and nature-study should be 
the earliest and ever-present elements of any 
plan. From the hours that a child spends in 
his mother's arms, he should be brought into 
contact with the material and the form of 
genuine literature, literature that means some- 



WASTE IN EDUCATION 155 

thing. This does not mean Homer or Dante 
or Shakspere, of course, but the fairy-tales, 
the myths, and the nursery rhymes that are 
part of the literary inheritance of the race. 
A boy ought to know a good deal of literature, 
to love it, and to have caught a bit of the 
literary spirit, if only by imitation, even be- 
fore he knows by sight more than half the 
letters of the alphabet. From his first stum- 
bling steps about the nursery he should be kept 
similarly in contact with nature in some form. 
Animals and growing plants should be his earli- 
est teachers in nature-study, and when he first 
takes his seat in an organized school, a con- 
siderable number of the facts of nature should 
be familiar to him and he should be truly ap- 
preciative of them. To the query as to how 
this is possible, it may be bluntly answered 
that it is possible because it has been done 
and is being done all the time by intelligent 
and observant mothers. Of course, if the child 
is so unfortunate as to be given at this time 
the task of acquiring some facility in speaking 
French or German, from association with a 
nurse-maid or a nursery governess, at the ex- 
pense of gaining an idiomatic and careful use 
of the mother tongue, and if all his mental 
energy is turned inward instead of outward, 



156 



WASTE IN EDUCATION 



The system 
for the child, 
not the child 
for the 
system 



then an educational chaos is likely to result 
that does incalculable damage and prevents 
any number of good things from taking place 
in his mental life. 

Once in school, the chief elements of wasted 
time for the child are: (i) annual, or even semi- 
annual, promotions that may not be departed 
from; (2) reviews and examinations in the in- 
terest of so-called thoroughness; and (3) bad 
teaching. 

A school that moves forward in February or 
June in solid phalanx, and then only, might do 
for wooden Indians, but it is not suited to 
growing human beings. A pupil ought to be 
changed in grade just as often as it is appar- 
ent that he is either overtaxed where he is, or 
that he is not taxed enough. Theories must 
give way to facts. The system is for the 
pupils, not the pupils for the system. Of 
course, to deal with the needs and capacities 
of each pupil costs trouble; but then all edu- 
cation is more or less troublesome to some- 
body. It worries some principals and teachers 
to think that a pupil promoted in November, 
for instance, will be likely to "lose" all that 
his old class goes over from November till 
February, and all that his new class has gone 
over from September to November. What 



WASTE IN EDUCATION 157 

there is to worry about is a puzzle to me. It 
seems rather a cause for congratulation that 
this particular child can get along without 
some scraps of information that others seem 
to need. 

The fetish of thoroughness is another form Thoroughness 
of the pedagogue's paganism. To know a 
thing thoroughly does not necessarily mean, 
happily, to be able to call it by name, or to re- 
call it on any and every occasion, but to know 
its relations to other things or occurrences, 
its causes and its effects. That sort of knowl- 
edge comes, and can only come, from reflec- 
tion. To do a thing or to repeat a thing over 
and over is by no means to reflect upon it. 
Repetitions are not always reviews, and mem- 
ory tests are rarely examinations. A review 
and an examination should always be reflec- 
tive in character. Then they make for real, 
rather than for sham, thoroughness; then only 
are they genuine educational exercises. To 
ask a boy to prove the theorem that "Tri- 
angles which have an angle in each equal, and 
the including sides proportional, are similar," 
may or may not show that he knows what he 
is talking about. But to ask him, "What is 
meant by the similarity of triangles ? When 
are two triangles similar, and why?" will very 



158 WASTE IN EDUCATION 

soon enable you to ascertain whether the boy 
is really learning geometry or not. The best 
and fairest sort of examination is one that asks 
pupils no question that they have ever seen 
before. To answer such questions correctly 
requires the power to think, not merely the 
ability to remember; and it is the power to 
think that we are trying to train and to test. 
Besides, it is just such questions that real life 
will put to the child continually when he 
grows up. 
Bad teaching Finally, there is bad teaching, without men- 
tion of which no paper on education is quite 
complete. As it is practically impossible to 
secure the dismissal from public-school posi- 
tions of hard-working and deserving young 
women "simply because they cannot teach/' 
we are likely to have this chief cause of waste 
with us for another century or two while pub- 
lic opinion is learning what education really 
means. In private schools, however, the task 
of getting rid of incompetent teachers ought 
to be easy. Intelligent parents ought to find 
out what good teaching is, and withhold their 
children from anything else. But my obser- 
vation is that they do not do this. A certain 
type of parent will ask which private secondary 
school is fashionable, or which has the best 



WASTE IN EDUCATION 159 

athletic record, or which sent the largest num- 
ber of boys into college last year without 
conditions; and, on finding out about these 
things, they throw their innocent children into 
the hopper. The burden of proof is nowadays 
on a financially successful school; it must 
demonstrate that it really educates, despite 
its success. On the other hand, it will not do 
to go to the opposite extreme, and infer that 
when a school is a financial failure it is because 
of its excellence. That is bad logic. 

No parent can afford to send his child to a 
teacher who does not habitually make special 
preparation for every lesson or class exercise. 
The oftener a lesson has been given the more 
wooden it is likely to be, unless special thought 
is given to its presentation. Time not prepared 
for is, in school life, time wasted. No single 
element contributes so much to live, practical 
teaching as careful preparation for every les- 
son. 

Another and very prolific source of waste Differences 
in education is due to the time-honored illu- ^ een 

children 

sion that all boys and girls are born equal — 
equal to anything, apparently. The blessings 
of the principle of choice, which in higher edu- 
cation is known as the elective system, are 
being so rapidly extended, however, that this 



160 WASTE IN EDUCATION 

obstacle to progress will be steadily diminished. 
Choice may sometimes be exercised by a par- 
ent on his child's behalf, but as soon as ca- 
pacity and taste begin to show themselves the 
pupil will do his own choosing, to the immense 
benefit of his moral, as well as of his intellec- 
tual, nature. To overtax the nervous system 
of a child is in the highest degree wasteful. 
Not to have him take ample time for system- 
atic and vigorous physical exercise, preferably 
in the open air, is wasteful. To allow or to 
compel children to carry on more than four, 
or at most five, subjects of study at one and 
the same time is .wasteful. For the parent or 
the teacher not to know about the laws gov- 
erning a child's physical and mental growth is 
excessively wasteful. Read, for example, Doc- 
tor Francis Warner's Study of Children and 
Preyer's Infant Mind, and see how much light 
they throw on what is going on before our eyes 
every day, and to which we are, as a rule, 
wholly blind. 
Poor Even so good a thing as the present wide- 

spread revival of interest in education has 
been productive of waste, by putting into the 
hands of undiscriminating readers a mass of 
what has been appropriately termed stuff, 
bearing the name of educational literature. 



educational 
literature 



WASTE IN EDUCATION 161 

Some of the books and periodicals that purport 
to deal with education are enough to make one 
regret the invention of printing. To para- 
phrase one of Speaker Reed's happy character- 
izations, they cannot be read without subtract- 
ing from the sum of human knowledge. Some 
of them bear otherwise reputable names. But 
they are simply dreadful. Yet they are often 
read, sometimes quoted, and occasionally fol- 
lowed. Untold waste may be attributed to 
this source. A pressing need in education 
to-day is an index that will pillory the bad 
books and the hopelessly befogged and routine 
educational journals. 

The most serious aspect of the waste that 
surrounds us on every side is not the waste 
of time; that could perhaps be endured. It 
is the dissipation of energy, the loss of effective- 
ness, the blunting of natural capacity and 
aptitude. As a result, we grow accustomed to 
low standards of performance and to acquiesce 
in them. We open our eyes in amazement at 
what is only fitness or adaptation of an indi- 
vidual to his task, and call upon the word 
genius to hide our inability to explain how it 
happened. 

A strange thing is that almost every intelli- 
gent person accepts these principles as soon as 



162 WASTE IN EDUCATION 

they are stated; they are so obvious. But the 
merest fraction of these same intelligent per- 
sons act upon them. In consequence, their 
children waste both time and opportunity, and 
society suffers sorely. 



IX 



THE CONDUCT OF THE KINDER- 
GARTEN 



An address before the Kindergarten Department of the 
National Educational Association at Los Angeles, 
California, July 12, 1899 



THE CONDUCT OF THE KINDER- 
GARTEN 

There are two well-known and easily dis- 
tinguishable forms of educational criticism. 
There is, first of all, that of the censorious 
critic, who seeks for weaknesses in points of 
detail, who lacks equally a sense of proportion 
and a sense of humor, and who overlooks the 
fact that in the working out of great funda- 
mental principles, not even the greatest of 
them flows to its full application without some 
slowing of the current or some eddy in the 
stream. Such is the criticism which tends to 
ridicule, to break down, to destroy, and it is 
wholly unworthy of attention in any form. 

There is, on the other hand, a criticism 
which is sympathetic, which is appreciative, 
and which, with some insight into the aim 
and methods of an educational movement, 
points out ways and methods of strengthening 
and improving that movement with the de- 
clared purpose of building up a more enduring 
educational superstructure. 

Having, as I have, so profound an admira- 
ls 



Hegel 



166 THE CONDUCT OF 

tion for the spirit, methods, and aim of the 
kindergarten, and being so absolutely con- 
vinced, not only of its excellence as an edu- 
cational factor in its own place, but of its value 
as an inspiration to all education, it would be 
quite impossible for me to meet this depart- 
ment in any spirit but that of a kindly and 
constructive criticism. 
Froebeiand You are, of course, familiar with the state- 

ment, often made, that the philosophies of 
Froebel and of Hegel, containing the deepest 
insights of the German philosophy of this cen- 
tury, are more popular in the United States 
than at home. The inference is drawn that 
Germany has outgrown their inspiration and 
motive power; and the inference is equally 
suggested to us that we are trading here upon 
second-hand material. I do not believe that 
to be true. It is certainly true that the kin- 
dergarten is to-day upon a higher plane, is 
more efficient, more wide-spread, and more 
honored in America than in any other culture 
nation. I cannot interpret that fact to our 
discredit. It is equally true that the great 
seed-thought of Hegel — the evolution of the 
human spirit, reflecting the single principle, 
common alike to nature and to mind, which 
is rightly called divine — it is true that that 



THE KINDERGARTEN 167 

seed-thought and that insight into life are 
more highly esteemed, more studied, and more 
fully applied to-day by American scholars 
than by those of any other nation. I cannot in- 
terpret that fact to our discredit. If Germany 
has seen fit to turn her face, in part at least, 
toward some gods which others can but con- 
sider false, and away from the wisest of her 
teachers, this will but fasten our hold the 
stronger on those truths of which we seem so 
sure. 

One criticism which is made in a construe- is the 
tive spirit upon the work of the kindergarten t0 o f o2^ n 
is that it often exalts the letter above the 
spirit; that it tends to make static, definite, 
and permanent the forms of procedure, kinds 
of material, and methods of intellectual, moral, 
and social development, which are not ends in 
themselves, but rather rungs of a ladder by 
which the child-spirit climbs to a higher view- 
point from which outlook on life becomes 
broader and richer. There is basis for that 
criticism. One danger in which the kinder- 
garten has stood lies in what may be called 
the worship of literal form as distinguished 
from exaltation of the spirit, which clothes it- 
self in ever-varying forms. How has that 
come about when the real spirit of Froebel, 



168 TEE CONDUCT OF 

like the real spirit of Hegel, is so clearly and 
surely a principle of development ? There is 
only one answer to that question. It is be- 
cause in some parts of this country the kinder- 
garten movement, appealing to the philan- 
thropic instinct of men and women not highly 
trained to think, has furnished them with 
educational material which they have seemed 
to understand, and with which they have too 
often been satisfied. In other words, the sure 
method of escape from that particular lower- 
ing of the tone of kindergarten thought and 
practise lies in the one thing which the kin- 
dergartner most needs to-day — wider scholar- 
ship. It is too often supposed that because the 
kindergarten teacher is dealing with the very 
young child, an emptiness of mind coupled 
with amiability of disposition will suffice to 
direct the child's spiritual development. A 
stupid person may perhaps direct education 
at that stage where some adequate conscious- 
ness of the subject-matter is had by the pupil 
himself; but no wisdom is too great to deal 
with the young child, who can approach his 
subject-matter through symbols only. 

What is most needed to-day in this work is 
a higher standard of excellence in the training 
of kindergartners. I mean a broader general 



THE KINDERGARTEN 169 

preparation, a more wide-spread conviction as 
to the importance of thorough preparation. 
The resources of literature, science, art, and 
music must be drawn upon to the largest pos- 
sible extent. It is all well enough to learn, 
partly by instruction and partly by a period 
of apprenticeship, something of the mode of 
kindergarten procedure. But unless that pro- 
cedure be inspired and illuminated by a grasp 
upon general culture and modern scientific 
information, nothing but a formal and barren 
education will result. 

Too many low-standard kindergarten train- 
ing-classes are at the bottom of some of our 
faults. They have low standards of admis- 
sion, low ideals of training, and are too often 
satisfied with training in technic and form, 
trusting that time will repair the damage 
or experience remove it. That kindergarten 
teacher who is not constantly and continually 
a student, and a student along those great 
lines of human effort which I have named, 
will sooner or later dry up her inspiration at 
its source. First of all she must have scholar- 
ship, not only in entering upon the work, but 
afterward as well; a constant and broader 
study, which is truly philosophic, because 
comparative, and because it puts itself under 



170 THE CONDUCT OF 

the guidance of the best teachers; one which 
is also practical in the highest sense because it 
brings its resources to a focus every morning 
in the kindergarten room. 
The Another criticism which is sometimes made, 

not asepaxate anc ^ w * tn which my observation leads me to 
institution find myself in sympathy, is that the kinder- 
garten is often attached in an external manner 
to an organic scheme or school system, and is 
not conceived as an integral part of one process 
of child development. It was easy for such a 
condition to come about, because the kinder- 
garten, in its inception, represented ideas 
which were wholly strange to the schoolmas- 
ter's mind. The kindergartners were, there- 
fore, thrown back upon themselves, and in- 
crusted themselves with a shell for protection. 
It is now necessary for us to make sure that 
the shell does not stiffen and harden, making 
growth impossible. 

It is easy to mark off in large periods all de- 
velopment of the human mind. It is easy 
enough to mark off in large periods all growth 
of the human body. But who ever saw the 
body or the mind grow ? The subtle process 
goes on before our eyes, wholly unseen, unob- 
served. It does not obey any arithmetical 
law; it is not subject to precise measurement 



THE KINDERGARTEN 171 

or to scientific observation. We gather up 
those things which we call marks of progress 
and dwell upon them, but we are unable to 
put our hand on the point where one stage 
passes into the other. Therefore the educa- 
tional scheme which tries to base itself upon 
hard-and-fast periods is false to the vital prin- 
ciple of growth. 

It is impossible to say how many years are 
necessary, in every case, for kindergarten in- 
struction. I am confident that in the case of 
some children the symbolic period may be 
passed in one-half the time that other children 
may take; and we, believing in the principle 
of individuality and preaching it to others, 
must not fail to apply it to ourselves. This 
means that the child must be released for the 
elementary school as soon as he is ready for 
it — but no sooner — so far as we are able to 
observe and know. 

I am inclined to resist the contention that 
the kindergarten is a course of study. I have 
no objection to "courses of study," in the 
sense in which the term is often used; but I 
object very much to the theory that the child 
who is able to take the third step must not be 
allowed to take it because he has not taken 
the second. I do not believe in holding a 



172 THE CONDUCT OF 

child back for the sake of the "thoroughness" 
or "completeness" of the course of study. I 
believe the human mind in education should 
always be put at that task for which it is com- 
petent; and it is "pedagogical," not educa- 
tional, to insist that every step be covered, no 
matter at what expenditure of time, when the 
power to advance more rapidly is present. 
Therefore, it is necessary for the kindergarten 
to beware of holding children back. We do 
not want the elementary school to hold back 
those who are ready for the high school; we 
do not want the high school to hold back those 
who are ready for college; or the college, those 
who are ready for the university. We cannot 
put the child of three to seven years of age in 
a strait-jacket and say that there he must 
stay for a fixed time, regardless of his natural 
ability or accomplishments. 

Because the line of demarcation is so difficult 
to establish, it has become the duty of the 
kindergartner to acquaint herself in a general 
way (it is impracticable to do it in detail) with 
the principles, methods, and ideals of the ele- 
mentary school. There must be the most ab- 
solute sympathy between the kindergarten and 
the grades above it; and we are in these days 
rightly calling upon teachers of the lower grades 



THE KINDERGARTEN 173 

of the elementary school to master the spirit 
of the followers of Froebel. Sympathy comes 
from mutual understanding and knowledge. 
In this way the kindergarten will become at- 
tached to the school, and no longer be a sepa- 
rate and distinct part of the educational 
scheme; it will take its natural place as one 
of the various stages in the growth of one 
living and organic human mind. 

I know that there is a great demand that 
those who go into the kindergarten work shall 
know the principles of elementary-school teach- 
ing, and that elementary teachers shall go into 
the schools with a knowledge of the work and 
purposes of the kindergarten. This demand is 
made by the best educational sentiment and 
opinion. It remains for kindergartners to do 
their share in satisfying that demand by study- 
ing the principles of elementary-school work and 
by occasionally supplying elementary teachers 
from their own ranks. 

It is sometimes said that the kindergarten is The 
at war with the home; that these children of kinder g arten 

7 and the home 

tender years should be under their mother's 
care; that it is unnatural for children of that 
age to be brought together in groups for in- 
struction, however needful it may be. I hold 
the contrary opinion. I think that of all forms 



174 THE CONDUCT OF 

of educational work, none has been so success- 
ful, as yet, as the kindergarten in reaching and 
uplifting the home; and the kindergarten which 
does not have a mothers' class attached to it is 
not a kindergarten in the best sense of the word. 
Again, we sometimes hear it said that the 
kindergarten is an admirable thing for the 
children of the poor; that their children are 
neglected, dirty, unkempt, uncared for; that 
the children of the well-to-do need not be found 
in the kindergarten. In the first place, I re- 
sent such a distinction as wholly undemocratic 
and uneducational. In the second place, look- 
ing forward as I do to the next great educa- 
tional problem of this country, which will be, 
not the education of the poor, but the educa- 
tion of the rich, I am forced to wonder how the 
children of the rich can afford to be without 
the advantages of the kindergarten. It is a 
serious thing when, in our social and economic 
efforts, a line of class distinction is drawn. We 
have only to look at England to see how, with 
her high ideals, great opportunities, and large 
expenditures for education, the people find 
themselves hampered at every turn in striving 
to effect reforms, by social and economic dis- 
tinctions. We must not allow these to enter 
into our educational work. 



THE KINDERGARTEN 175 

One more point is important because in that The 
particular the kindergarten is widely mis- w ° d e rgart f n 

r ... and discipline 

understood. You hear the criticism from the 
elementary-school teacher, made with the best 
of intentions, but from what I hold to be a 
wrong point of view, that the kindergarten is 
disorderly, that it has not the discipline and 
the definiteness of routine of the elementary 
school. The kindergarten is, therefore, held 
to be a disintegrating influence in the develop- 
ment of the child, and to increase the task of 
discipline later on. My reply to this criticism 
is that it arises from what seems to me to be a 
wholly false conception of discipline or order. 
Suppose an observer passing over this busy 
city in a balloon were able to look down upon 
its crowded streets, on which men and women 
are passing and repassing in every direction, 
each going to his appointed task without in- 
terfering with his fellow; would such a scene 
be one of disorder, because the human beings 
within the observer's field of vision were not 
massed in phalanx and controlled as a unit 
by a military drill-master ? I think not. The 
scene would be one of a very high type of order 
indeed, one much higher, in fact, than the order 
of a marching regiment. Order is not an ex- 
ternal form, but an inner habit — the habit of 



176 THE KINDERGARTEN 

going in a purposeful way, with due regard to 
the purposes and rights of others, about some 
definite thing, even though the lines cross and 
recross. To substitute for this high type of 
order a single, definite form is to substitute the 
order which is death for the order which is 
life; and my response to such a criticism is that 
I should prefer to see more of the kindergarten 
order in the lower grades of the elementary 
school and less of the elementary-school order 
in the kindergarten. 

It is a striking fact, and one of the most 
hopeful signs to be found to-day in all educa- 
tion, that the two extremes of the educational 
process, the kindergarten and the university, 
are the two greatest conservators of individ- 
ualism; and it is only as the individual is being 
rescued from the routine of the intervening 
school periods that these periods are rising to 
perfection and efficiency. The great hope of 
our school system lies in the fact that the spirit 
of individualism is working down from the 
university and up from the kindergarten, and 
that some day the two lines of development 
will meet and will hold the whole educational 
process within their spheres of influence. 



X 



RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION AND ITS 
RELATION TO EDUCATION 



An address at St. Bartholomew's Church, New York, 
under the auspices of the Sunday School Commis- 
sion of the Diocese of New York, October 14, 1899 



RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION AND ITS 
RELATION TO EDUCATION 

The problems of what is called religious 
education are part of the problem of educa- 
tion as a whole. 

True education, as distinguished from the 
innumerable false uses of the word, is a unitary 
process. It knows no mathematically ac- 
curate subdivisions. It admits of no chemical 
analysis into elements, each of which has a 
real existence apart from the whole. When 
stretched upon a dissecting-table education is 
already dead. Its constituent parts are in- 
teresting and, in a way, significant; but when 
cut out of the whole, they have ceased to live. 
They are no longer vital, or truly educational. 
For this reason I hold that while there is and 
may be a religious training, an intellectual 
training, a physical training, there is no such 
thing as religious education, or intellectual 
education, or physical education. One might 
as well imagine a triangular or a circular geom- 
etry. We do not at once feel the force of this 
179 



i8o RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION AND 



Education 
part of the 
life-process 



statement, because of our loose, inaccurate, 
and inexact use of the word education. 

In my view education is part of the life- 
process. It is the adaptation of a person, a 
self-conscious being, to environment, and the 
development of capacity in a person to modify 
or control that environment. The adaptation 
of a person to his environment is the conserva- 
tive force in human history. It is the basis of 
continuity, solidarity. The development in a 
person of capacity to modify or control his en- 
vironment gives rise to progress, change, de- 
velopment. Education, therefore, makes for 
progress on the basis of the present acquisitions 
of the race. Its soundest ideals forbid, as a 
matter of course, both neglect of the historic 
past and the blind worshipping of that past 
as an idol. The importance of the past lies in 
its lessons for the future. When the past has 
no such lessons, we forget it as quickly as pos- 
sible. The survival of a tendency, a belief, or 
an institution is evidence that it is at least 
worth studying and that it must be reckoned 
with. These tendencies, beliefs, and institu- 
tions are studied and reckoned with for the 
purpose of discovering their vital principles 
and of putting a value upon them. The work- 
ing out of those vital principles is the future. 



ITS RELATION TO EDUCATION 181 

In this view, education is first and chiefly a 
matter of principles. Then, and secondarily, 
it is a matter of methods. The place, character, 
and function of religious training are to be 
settled, and only to be settled, by reference to 
fundamental educational principles. 

The first of these principles, and one of the study of the 

r i • j- j • r environment 

most tar-reaching, is discovered in framing an 
answer to the question: What is the present 
environment of a human being ? What do we 
mean by the use of the word environment, and 
what do we include in it, when we speak of it 
as that to which education tends to adapt a 
person ? We mean, I think, by the word en- 
vironment, two things: First, man's physical 
surroundings, and, second, that vast accretion 
of knowledge and its results in habit and in 
conduct, which we call civilization. Natural 
forces play no small part in adapting human 
beings to both elements of environment, but 
the process of education is especially potent 
as regards adaptation to the second element — 
civilization. Civilization — man's spiritual en- 
vironment, all his surroundings which are not 
directly physical — this it is which has to be 
conquered, in its elements at least, before one 
can attain a true education. It is of the highest 
importance that we make sure that we see 



182 RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION AND 

clearly all the elements of the knowledge which 
is at the basis of civilization, and that we give 
each element its proper place in our educa- 
tional scheme. 

We may approach the analysis of our civili- 
zation, or spiritual environment, from many 
different points of view, and perhaps more 
than one classification of the results of that 
analysis may be helpful. The classification 
which I suggest, and which I have stated else- 
where in detail, 1 is a fivefold one. It separates 
civilization into man's science, his literature, 
his art, his institutional life, and his religious 
beliefs. Into one or another of these divisions 
may be put each of the results of human aspira- 
tion and of human achievement. Education 
must include knowledge of each of the five ele- 
ments named, as well as insight into them all 
and sympathy with them all. To omit any 
one of them is to cripple education and to make 
its results at best but partial. A man may be 
highly instructed and trained in science alone, 
or in literature, or in art, or in human institu- 
tions — man's ethical and political relation- 
ships — or in religion, but such a man is not 
highly educated. He is not educated, strictly 
speaking, at all, for one or more of the aspects 
» Cf. pp. 24-38, 



ITS RELATION TO EDUCATION 183 

of civilization are shut out from his view, or 
are apprehended imperfectly only and with- 
out true insight. 

If this analysis is correct, and I think it is, Religious 
then religious training is a necessary factor in tramD *. g 
education and must be given the time, the at- education 
tention, and the serious, continued treatment 
which it deserves. That religious training is 
not at the present time given a place by the 
side of the study of science, literature, art, or 
of human institutions, is well recognized. How 
has this come about ? How are the integrity 
and the completeness of education to be re- 
stored ? 

The separation of religious training from Forces 
education as a whole is the outgrowth of Hi* T *™ g 
Protestantism and of democracy. A people training from 

1 • r • t • i • 1 1 •• education 

united in professing a religion which is ethnic 
or racial, or a nation giving adhesion to a single 
creed or to one ecclesiastical organization, al- 
ways unite religious training with the other 
elements of education and meet no embarrass- 
ment or difficulty in so doing. During the un- 
disputed dominance of the Roman Catholic 
Church in Europe, education not only included 
religious training as a matter of course, but it 
was almost wholly confined to religious train- 
ing. Theology was the main interest of the 



184 RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION AND 

Middle Ages, and the theological interest 
caused religious training to permeate and sub- 
ordinate whatever instruction was given in 
other subjects. Music was taught that the 
church services might be well rendered. Arith- 
metic and astronomy were most useful in fix- 
ing the church festivals and the calendar. With 
the advent of the Protestant Reformation all 
this was changed. Religion was still strenuously 
insisted upon as a subject of study, but the 
other subjects of instruction became increas- 
ingly independent of it and were gradually 
accorded a larger share of time and attention 
for themselves alone. 

Protestantism, however, would not by it- 
self have brought about the secularization of 
the school as it exists to-day in France and in 
the United States. Democracy and the con- 
viction that the support and control of educa- 
tion by the state is a duty, in order that 
the state and its citizens may be safeguarded, 
have necessarily forced the secularization of 
the school. Under the influence of the Protes- 
tant Reformation and that of the modern 
scientific spirit, men broke away from ad- 
herence to a single creed or to a single ecclesias- 
tical organization and formed diverse sects, 
groups, parties, or churches, difTering in many 



ITS RELATION TO EDUCATION 185 

details from each other — the differences, I 
regret to add, being far more weightily em- 
phasized than the more numerous and more 
important points of agreement. When the 
state-supported school came into existence, 
this state of religious diversity found expres- 
sion in dissatisfaction with the teaching, under 
state auspices, of any one form of religious 
belief. The first step toward the removal of 
this dissatisfaction was to reduce religious 
teaching to the lowest possible terms; and 
these were found in the reading of the Bible, 
the recitation of the Lord's Prayer, and the 
singing of a devotional hymn at the opening o£ 
the daily school exercise. But even this gave 
rise to complaint. Discussions arose as to 
whether a single version of the Bible must be 
used in these readings, or whether any version, 
chosen by the reader, might be read. A still 
more extreme view insisted that the Bible it- 
self was a sectarian book, and that the non- 
Christian portion of the community, no matter 
how small numerically, were subjected to vio- 
lation of their liberties and their rights, when 
any portion of the public funds was used to 
present Christian doctrine to school children, 
even in this merely incidental way. The view 
that the state-supported schools must refrain 



186 RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION AND 



Is the Bible 
a sectarian 
book? 



absolutely from exerting any religious influence, 
however small, is one which has found wide 
favor among the American people. It has 
led to more or less sweeping provisions in State 
constitutions and in statutes against sectarian 
instruction of any kind at public expense. A 
judicial decision on this subject of great in- 
terest and of far-reaching importance is that 
rendered in 1890 by the Supreme Court of 
Wisconsin, in the case of the State ex rel. 
Weiss and others vs. the District Board of 
School District No. 6 of the city of Edgerton. 1 
In this case the essential question at bar was 
whether or not the reading of the Bible, in 
King James's version, in the public schools was 
sectarian instruction, and as such fell within 
the scope of the constitutional and statutory 
prohibitions of such instruction. In an elab- 
orate and careful opinion the court held that 
reading from the Bible in the schools, although 
unaccompanied by any comment on the part 
of the teacher, is " instruction"; that since the 
Bible contains numerous doctrinal passages, 
upon some of which the peculiar creed of al- 
most every religious sect is based, and since 
such passages may reasonably be understood 
to inculcate the doctrines predicated upon 

1 Wisconsin Supreme Court Reports (1890), j6 : 177-221. 



ITS RELATION TO EDUCATION 187 

them, the reading of the Bible is also "sec- 
tarian instruction"; that, therefore, the use 
of the Bible as a text-book in the public schools 
and the stated reading thereof in such schools, 
without restriction, "has a tendency to incul- 
cate sectarian ideas," and falls within the pro- 
hibition of the constitution and the statutes 
of Wisconsin. 

In this decision there are some very in- 
teresting observations on the general question 
of religious training and the place of the Bible 
in education. The court says, for example: 
"The priceless truths of the Bible are best 
taught to our youth in the church, the Sab- 
bath and parochial schools, the social religious 
meetings, and, above all, in the home circle. 
There those truths may be explained and en- 
forced, the spiritual welfare of the child guarded 
and protected, and his spiritual nature directed 
and cultivated, in accordance with the dictates 
of the parental conscience." Judge Orton, in 
a supplementary opinion, adds: "[The schools] 
are called by those who wish to have not only 
religion, but their own religion, taught therein 
' Godless schools.' They are Godless, and the 
educational department of the government is 
Godless, in the same sense that the executive, 
legislative, and administrative departments are 



RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION AND 



The secular 
schools of 
France 



Godless. So long as our Constitution remains 
as it is, no one's religion can be taught in our 
common schools/' 

The Supreme Court of Wisconsin has in 
this decision given forcible, definite expres- 
sion to the view held by the large majority of 
American citizens, and has clothed that view 
with the authority of law. It is in this sense 
and for substantially the reasons adduced in 
the decision which I have quoted, that the 
American public school is secular and that it 
can give and does give attention to four of 
the five elements of civilization which I have 
named — science, literature, art, and institu- 
tional life — but none to the fifth element — 
religion. 

In France, the great democratic nation of 
Europe, the case is quite similar. The famous 
law of March 28, 1882, excluded religious in- 
struction from the public schools, and put 
moral and civic training in its stead. M. 
Ribiere, in defending this provision before the 
senate, used almost the exact language later 
employed by the Supreme Court of Wisconsin. 
He held that the elementary school, main- 
tained by the state, open to all, could not be 
used to teach the doctrines of any sect; that 
it must be neither religious nor anti-religious, 



ITS RELATION TO EDUCATION 189 

but wholly secular, neutral. M. Paul Bert, 
who presented the measure to the Chamber of 
Deputies, pointed out that the " religious neu- 
trality" of the school was the logical outcome 
of the principle of the freedom of the individual 
conscience. "In our eyes," M. Bert continued, 
"this argument has so great force that, with- 
out the prohibition of religious instruction in 
the schools, compulsory education would appear 
to us to be not an advantage, but a danger." 
In order that opportunity should be given to 
parents to provide religious instruction for 
their children — this is explicitly stated in the 
law — the schools are closed one day each week, 
other than Sunday. In France Thursday, not 
Saturday, as with us, is usually taken as the 
school holiday. 

This, then, is the condition of affairs in the Limitations 
United States and in France as regards relig- secularized 
ious training in education. The influence first school 
of Protestantism and then of democracy has 
completely secularized the school. The school, 
therefore, gives an incomplete education. The 
religious aspect of civilization and the place 
and influence of religion in the life of the indi- 
vidual are excluded from its view. This is the 
first important fact to be reckoned with. 

The second fact is that the whole work of 



ioo RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION AND 



The family 
and the 
church as 
educational 
agencies 



education does not fall upon the school. It 
cannot do so and ought not to do so. The 
family, the church, the library, the newspaper, 
society itself, are all educational institutions 
as truly as is the school. The school is the 
most highly organized of them all. Its aims 
and methods are the most definite. But it is 
quite untrue to suppose that nothing enters 
into education save through the medium of 
the school programme. Therefore, it does not 
follow that because the school has become secu- 
lar, all religious influence and training have 
necessarily gone out of education. If the 
school is not distinctly religious, it is even 
more distinctly not anti-religious. The real 
question, then, is what are the other educa- 
tional factors, especially the family and the 
church, doing to see to it that school instruc- 
tion is rounded out into education through 
their co-operation ? It is the duty of the family 
and the church to take up their share of the 
educational burden, particularly the specifically 
religious training, with the same care, the 
same preparation, and the same zeal which the 
school gives to the instruction which falls to 
its lot. 

Before coming to the implications of this 
position, there are one or two suggestions 



ITS RELATION TO EDUCATION 191 

which must receive passing notice. It is said — Religious 
by a very few it is true — that there is no such beUef , 

J _ J universal 

thing as religion other than mere superstition, 
and that religion is not universal in any event, 
and therefore that the fifth element of our 
civilization is but an empty name. It is urged, 
with Petronius, that fear first made the gods, 
and with Feuerbach that religion is man's most 
terrible ailment. These contentions seem to 
me to arise from simple ignorance, alike of 
history and of human nature. There is a re- 
sponse from the human heart and from the 
recorded thoughts and deeds of civilized men, 
based neither on credulity nor on fear, to the 
description of Hegel, that "religion is for our 
consciousness that region in which all the 
enigmas of the world are solved, all the con- 
tradictions of deeper-reaching thought have 
their meaning unveiled, and where the voice 
of the heart's pain is silenced — the region of 
eternal truth, of eternal rest, of eternal peace." 
If religion may be defined, in Doctor Martin- 
eau's words, as "the belief and worship of 
Supreme Mind and Will, directing the uni- 
verse and holding moral relations with human 
life," then civilization is unintelligible without 
it. Much of the world's literature and art, 
and the loftiest achievements of men, are, with 



192 RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION AND 

the religious element withdrawn, and without 
the motive of religion to explain them, as 
barren as the desert of Sahara. This prop- 
osition hardly needs argument. "The re- 
ligiosity of man is a part of his psychical 
being. In the nature and laws of the human 
mind, in its intellect, sympathies, emotions, 
and passions, lie the well-springs of all re- 
ligions, modern or ancient, Christian or hea- 
then. To these we must refer, by these 
we must explain, whatever errors, falsehood, 
bigotry, or cruelty have stained man's creeds 
or cults; to them we must credit whatever 
truth, beauty, piety, and love have glorified 
and hallowed his long search for the perfect 
and the eternal. . . . 

"The fact is that there has not been a single 

tribe, no matter how rude, known in history 

or visited by travellers, which has been shown 

to be destitute of religion under some form." 1 

Moral and But it is also urged that a satisfactory sub- 

P 1V1 . C ^ stitute for religious training is to be found in 

instruction to to 

no substitute moral and civic instruction. This view is 

teaching 10US widely held in France and has led to some 

rather absurd consequences. So scholarly a 

writer as Mr. Thomas Davidson has just now 

1 Brinton, Religions of Primitive Peoples (New York, 1897), 
p. 30. 



ITS RELATION TO EDUCATION 193 

urged this view upon us Americans. 1 He is 
able to do so, however, only by completely 
identifying religion and philosophy — and (as 
I think) a bad philosophy at that — in his 
definition of religion. But, in fact, the field of 
moral and civic instruction is quite distinct 
from man's religious life; it belongs to the 
institutional aspect of civilization. The moral 
aspect of life has long since come to be closely 
related to the religious aspect, but nevertheless 
the two are quite different. A religion, in- 
deed, may be quite immoral in its influences 
and tendencies. It may lead to cruelty and 
sensuality, and yet be a religion. There have 
been not a few such. To confuse religion with 
ethics is to obscure both. Religion must be 
apprehended as something distinct and peculiar 
if it is to be apprehended at all. Matthew 
Arnold was absolutely wrong when he wrote: 
"Religion is ethics heightened, enkindled, lit 
up by feeling; the passage from morality to 
religion is made when to morality is applied 
emotion." It is still easier to make clear and 
enforce the distinction between morality and 
religion, if we substitute for the general term 
religion the highest type of all religions, Chris- 

1 "American Democracy as a Religion," International Journal 
of Ethics, October, 1899. 



194 RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION AND 



Opportunity 
of the 
Sunday- 
school 



tianity. It is Christianity, of course, which 
we have in mind when speaking of religion. 

My argument thus far has aimed to make 
it clear that religious training is an integral 
part of education, that in this country the 
State school does not and cannot include 
religious training in its programme, that it 
must therefore be provided by other agencies 
and on as high a plane of efficiency as is reached 
by instruction in other subjects, and that 
moral and civic training is no possible substitute 
for religious teaching. The agencies at hand 
for religious teaching are the family and the 
church, and, in particular, the special school, 
the Sunday-school, maintained by the church 
for the purposes of religious training. 

The Sunday-school is in this way brought 
into a position of great responsibility and im- 
portance, for it is, in fact, a necessary part of 
the whole educational machinery of our time. 
It must, therefore, be made fully conscious of 
the principles on which its work rests and of 
the methods best suited to the attainment of 
its ends. 

The Sunday-school must, first of all, under- 
stand fully the organization, aims, and methods 
of the public schools; for it is their ally. It 
must take into consideration the progress of 



ITS RELATION TO EDUCATION 195 

the instruction there given in secular subjects, 
and must correlate its own religious instruction 
with this. It must study the facts of child 
life and development, and it must base its 
methods upon the actual needs and capacities 
of childhood. It must organize its work econom- 
ically and scientifically, and it must demand of 
its teachers special and continuous prepara- 
tion for their work. It must realize that it is 
first and above all an educational institution 
and not a proselytizing one, and that the in- 
herent force of the truth which it teaches is 
far greater than any attempted bending of 
that truth to special ends. It must cease to 
be merely a part of the missionary work of 
the parish, and become a real factor in the 
educational work of the community. It must 
give more time to its work, and the traditional 
division of time on Sunday will have to be 
gradually readjusted in order to make a serious 
Sunday-school session possible. A Saturday 
session may also be planned for. It must 
recognize that ordinarily no single parish or 
congregation can make proper provision for 
the religious training of all the young people 
under its care. The very largest parishes and 
congregations may be able to maintain a fully 
equipped Sunday-school for children from five 



196 religious instruction and 

to eighteen, but the smaller parishes and con- 
gregations in towns and cities must learn to 
combine for their common good. Each parish 
or congregation may readily and ought always 
to maintain a Sunday-school of elementary 
grade, but several adjoining parishes or con- 
gregations must combine in order to organize 
and support a proper course of religious in- 
struction for children of secondary-school age 
and beyond, say from thirteen to eighteen 
years. In a whole city, unless it be New York 
or Chicago or Philadelphia, one, or at most 
two, training-classes for Sunday-school teachers 
should be sufficient. Furthermore, Sunday- 
school teachers, like all other teachers, should 
be paid. They should be selected because of 
competence and special training; they should 
be led to look upon their work not as philan- 
thropy, not even as missionary work, but as 
something which is larger than either because 
it includes both, namely education. The several 
Christian bodies, as long as they remain distinct, 
will naturally maintain their own separate 
Sunday-school systems; but within any given 
branch of the Christian church, be it Protestant 
Episcopal, Presbyterian, Methodist, or other, 
all of the principles just stated can be applied. 
Sunday-schools so organized could be given 



ITS RELATION TO EDUCATION 197 

the same systematic professional supervision 
that is provided for the secular schools. Each 
body of Christians in a given community could 
have its own Sunday-school board and its own 
Sunday-school superintendent and staff of as- 
sistants. Between some Christian bodies actual 
co-operation in Sunday-school instruction ought 
to be possible. For the proper organization 
and conduct of this religious instruction there 
must be a parish or congregational appropria- 
tion, or, better far, an endowment fund, to 
bear the legitimate cost of religious teaching 
and its systematic professional supervision. 

The Sunday-school course of study must be 
looked after. It is at present — I say it with 
all respect — too exclusively pious. Religion 
is much more important in civilization and in 
life than the Sunday-school now teaches. It 
is more real. It touches other interests at 
more points. The course of study of the future 
must reveal these facts and illustrate them. 
It must be carefully graded and adjusted to 
the capacity of the child. It must reach out 
beyond the Bible and the catechism. It must 
make use of biography, of history, of geog- 
raphy, of literature and of art, to give both 
breadth and depth and vitality to the truths 
it teaches and enforces. It must comprehend 



198 RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION AND 

and reveal the fact that the spiritual life is not 
apart from the natural life and in antagonism 
to it, but that the spirit interpenetrates all 
life, and that all life is of the spirit. The prob- 
lem, then, is not religion and education, but 
religion in education. 

This, it may be said, is a radical programme, 
a counsel of perfection. Perhaps so. If so, it 
will provide something to work toward. It 
will at least bring religious teaching under the 
influence of those principles and methods which 
have of late years so vitalized all secular teach- 
ing. It will give to it modern instruments, 
text-books, and illustrative material. 

Before dismissing these suggestions as im- 
practicable, because in part unfamiliar, it is 
well to face the alternative. It is that religious 
knowledge, and with religious knowledge a 
good deal else which is worth saving, will go 
out of the life of the next generation. What 
appears important enough to the elder gener- 
ation to be systematically organized, con- 
scientiously studied, and paid for in a terres- 
trial circulating medium, will deeply impress 
itself upon the younger. What is put off with 
a hurried and unsystematic hour on Sunday 
will not long seem very much worth while. 

Already the effects of the present policy are 



ITS RELATION TO EDUCATION 199 

being seen. To the average college student the Effects of 
first book of Milton's Paradise Lost is an enigma. !f°X ce of 

te the Bible 

The epithets, the allusions, even many of the 
proper names, are unfamiliar. This is due to 
ignorance of the Bible. It is necessary nowa- 
days to know something about Christianity 
as well as to be a Christian. The study of his- 
tory and of geography in connection with the 
spread and development of Christianity is 
fascinating. The study of biography in con- 
nection with the people of Israel and Old Tes- 
tament history generally may be made to put 
plenty of life into much that is now dead facts 
to be memorized. For older pupils the study 
of church history, and of the part played by 
religious beliefs and religious differences in the 
history of European dynasties, politics, and lit- 
erature will make it plain how moving a force 
religion is and has been in the development 
of civilization. Such pupils, too, are able to 
appreciate the Bible as literature if it be put 
before them from that point of view. It is too 
often treated as a treasury of texts only, and 
not as living literature which stands, as litera- 
ture, by the side of the world's greatest achieve- 
ments in poetry and in prose. 

The heart is the ultimate aim of all religious 
appeals. But the heart is most easily reached 



200 RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION 

The appeal to by informing the intellect and by fashioning 
hetrt" 1 "" 1 tne W ^* Knowledge and conduct react on 
the feelings, and the feelings, the heart (so to 
speak), are educated and refined through them. 
This fact will never be lost sight of by any com- 
petent religious teacher, and his purpose will 
never be to amass in his pupils knowledge about 
religion alone, but to use such knowledge to 
direct, elevate, and refine the religious feelings 
and to guide and form conduct into character. 
It is along such lines as these that the de- 
velopment of the Sunday-school, from a phase 
of parish mission work into an educational in- 
stitution of co-ordinate rank with the secular- 
ized school, must take place. There are numer- 
ous local problems to be solved, no doubt, and 
not a few practical difficulties to be overcome, 
but if the ideal be once firmly grasped and the 
purpose to reach it be formed, the result can- 
not be doubtful. 



XI 



THE SCOPE AND FUNCTION OF SEC- 
ONDARY EDUCATION 



An address before the University High School Conference 
at Champaign, Illinois, May 19, 1898 



THE SCOPE AND FUNCTION OF SEC- 
ONDARY EDUCATION 

The past decade has witnessed marked ac- 
tivity in matters pertaining to secondary educa- 
tion; that most ancient division of the educa- 
tional system has been subjected to close study 
and to vigorous discussion. Passing by other 
and equally significant evidences of this — 
particularly in the Scandinavian countries — 
I cite simply the three elaborate reports made 
in Germany in 1890 by the Berlin School Con- 
ference, in the United States in 1894 by the 
Committee of Ten appointed by the National 
Educational Association, and in England in 
1895 by the Royal Commission on Secondary 
Education. In a sense these three documents 
are epoch-making; they are in part a cause 
and in part an effect of the wide-spread opinion 
that secondary education is in need of reforma- 
tion and reorganization. 

Fortunately, secondary education no longer 

needs defense. Occasionally a lonely voice 

echoes the charge of Jack Cade — "Thou hast 

most traitorously corrupted the youth of the 

203 



204 THE SCOPE AND FUNCTION 

realm in erecting a grammar school. . . . 
Thou hast men about thee that usually talk of 
a noun or a verb, and such abominable words 
as no Christian ear can endure to hear"; or, 
at intervals, perhaps some cultivated cynic 
snarls after the fashion of the Tory governor 
of the colony of Virginia, who wrote home to 
England, "I thank God there are no free 
schools or printing, and I hope we shall not 
have them these hundred years": but these 
are only the humors of progress. 
Extent of At the close of the academic year 1895-6, 

education ** was estimated by the commissioner of educa- 
tion that 600,000 pupils were receiving secon- 
dary instruction in the United States. Nearly 
two-thirds of these were enrolled in the 5,000 
public high schools. Considerably more than 
one-half of the total number of pupils were 
girls. The number of secondary students to 
each 1,000 of population was 7.92. Every State 
and Territory now has public high schools, 
ranging from the 558 in Ohio, through 343 in 
New York, 329 in Iowa, 319 in Illinois, 219 in 
Massachusetts, and 166 in Texas to the 2 in 
Utah. It is obvious, therefore, that every sec- 
tion of the country and all classes of people are 
vitally interested in the efficiency and adequacy 
of secondary training. There is still another 



OF SECONDARY EDUCATION 205 

fact of great importance to be referred to in 
this connection. During the last few years the 
development in this country of secondary educa- 
tion at the public expense has been little short 
of marvellous. From 1890-6, while the number 
of students in private secondary schools in- 
creased 12 per cent, or from 95,000 to 107,000, 
the number of students in public secondary 
schools increased 87 per cent, or from 203,000 
to 380,000. Nor is this all: since 1893-4 t ^ e 
number of students in private secondary schools 
has been steadily decreasing. These facts are 
an eloquent witness to the growth of the spirit 
of democracy in education and they are a con- 
clusive answer to those curiously inept critics 
who insist that it is un-American to provide 
other than elementary education at public 
expense. 

Such being, in general, the present status of 
what we know as secondary education, I wish 
to discuss first its scope or limits, and second 
its function or purposes. 

What is secondary education? The defini- What is 
tion makers gravely walk about in a circle when elation? 
they define secondary as that which succeeds 
elementary and precedes higher education, 
higher education as that which succeeds sec- 
ondary education, and elementary education 



206 THE SCOPE AND FUNCTION 

as that which precedes it. One is reminded by 
this process of the Indian referred to by Locke 
who, saying that the world was supported by 
a great elephant, was asked what the elephant 
rested on; to which his answer was — a great 
tortoise. But being again pressed to know 
what gave support to the broad-backed tortoise, 
replied, something he knew not what. Evi- 
dently we need a basis more substantial than 
anything that the Indian or the definition 
makers have to ofFer. My own preference is 
to look for the base-line from which to measure 
and lay out the educational course, in the na- 
ture of the child-mind and in the character of 
the studies pursued, rather than in any merely 
formal and external scheme of administrative 
classification. The Royal Commission on Sec- 
ondary Education, after a long and exceptionally 
intelligent discussion of this question, conclude 
that secondary education is "the education of 
the boy or girl not simply as a human being 
who needs to be instructed in the mere rudi- 
ments of knowledge, but it is a process of in- 
tellectual training and personal discipline con- 
ducted with special regard to the profession or 
trade to be followed. "* In other words, ele- 
mentary or general education is, in Plato's 

1 Report (London, 1895), I : 136. 



OF SECONDARY EDUCATION 207 

phrase, iirl iraiheia, for culture, while secondary 
or more special training is iirl re^vy, for an art 
or trade. To reach this conclusion the learned 
commission have been obliged to give to the 
word art or trade a very unusual scope. It is 
held to include the interpretation of a literature 
or a science, the making of a picture or a book, 
the practise of a plastic or a manual art, the 
convincing of a jury or the persuading of a 
senate, the translating or the annotating of an 
author, the dyeing of wool, the weaving of 
cloth, the designing or the constructing of a 
machine, the navigating of a ship or the com- 
manding of an army. 1 I am able to see in this 
definition and description only an elaborate 
begging of the question. 

The very name secondary implies that it has 
reference to a primary or elementary educa- 
tion that comes before it. This elementary 
education I define as that general training in 
the elements of knowledge that is suitable for 
a pupil from the age of six or seven to the period 
of adolescence. It is ordinarily organized in 
eight or nine grades, each occupying an academic 
year. Nine grades are too many and are dis- 
tinctly wasteful. To spend so much time on 
these simple studies leads to that arrested 

1 Report (London, 1895), I ; 136. 



208 



THE SCOPE AND FUNCTION 



The 

secondary- 
school 
programme 
of study 



development which is so often the bane of the 
elementary-school period. I have never known 
a child who needed more than six years' time 
in which to complete the elementary course, 
and I have known but few who have, as an 
actual fact, ever taken longer than that. An 
eight-year course is certainly ample for any 
community, and children should be given every 
encouragement and every opportunity to cover 
the elementary studies in even less time. 

The plan of studies in the elementary school 
is pretty much the same the world over. It is 
most clearly and concisely stated in the French 
decree of January 18, 1887, which defines ele- 
mentary education as made up of the elements 
of morals and of civics; reading and writing; 
the study of the French language; arithmetic, 
including the metric system; history and geog- 
raphy, particularly those of France; object- 
lessons and the elements of science; the ele- 
ments of drawing, singing, and manual training; 
gymnastics and military exercises. In the 
nature of the case all this instruction will deal 
with elementary and simple notions only, and, 
psychologically speaking, it will lay much em- 
phasis upon sense-perception and the imita- 
tive instinct. The nature of the child-mind 
requires that. Yet it is the gravest of errors 



OF SECONDARY EDUCATION 209 

in early teaching to suppose that sense-percep- 
tion is itself incapable of analysis and that no 
thought-process is involved in it. Kant long 
ago said that all knowledge is judgment, and 
Doctor Harris has clearly shown the nature of 
the judgment that is implied in the activities 
of sense. 1 

It must not be supposed, therefore, that be- 
tween the mental activities of the child in the 
elementary school and those of his fellow in 
the secondary school there is a great gulf fixed. 
Quite the contrary: the two sets of activities 
are alike in kind, and differ only in quality and 
in the explicitness of the processes involved. 
What is hidden beneath the surface in the 
mind of the child from six to twelve comes 
more and more fully into consciousness in the 
child from twelve to sixteen. There will, there- 
fore, be an easy and gradual progression from 
the earlier stage to the later one, and it is a 
hopeless and unjustifiable undertaking to at- 
tempt, as is sometimes done, to draw a hard- 
and-fast line between them. 

The marked characteristics of the pupil of Character- 
secondary-school age are due to the fact that, ls j"! s of 

jo ■> adolescence 

as Rousseau puts it, we are born twice; the 
first time into existence, the second time into 

1 Psychologic Foundations of Education (New York, 1898), 
chaps. IX, X. 



210 THE SCOPE AND FUNCTION 

life; the first time as a member of the race, the 
second time as a member of the sex — in other 
words, they are due to the phenomena of ado- 
lescence. The physical and mental effects of 
this epoch in human life begin earlier and last 
longer than is sometimes supposed. They 
dominate the entire secondary-school period. 
Rapid growth and increase of nervous and 
mental energy mark these years. Emotions, 
vague and disordered, displace the placidity 
of earlier life. Ambitions, yearnings, desires 
are formulated crudely and for the first time. 
Introspection begins and a morbid self-con- 
sciousness is not infrequent. The future, 
hitherto almost unthought of, becomes of great 
interest and importance, and overshadows the 
present. Abnormally intense religious expe- 
riences and reflections are common. The old 
and familiar tasks, occupations, and games no 
longer suffice; the soul seems to overflow, as it 
were, and demands new and more difficult 
problems to occupy it and to absorb its activi- 
ties. The higher thought-processes, until now 
latent, exhibit themselves in a variety of ways, 
and more formal and elaborate chains of in- 
ference supersede the reasoning from one 
particular instance to another that is so char- 
acteristic of the little child. 



studies 



OF SECONDARY EDUCATION 211 

These facts point directly to the essential character- 
characteristics of secondary-school studies. lstlcs ° 

J secondary- 

They must, in the first place, be comparative school 
and reflective in character in order to provide 
food for the newly discovered intellectual 
capacities; in the second place, they must be 
and continue to become more and more difficult, 
in order to occupy and develop the augmented 
nervous and mental energy that now presents 
itself; and in the third place, the tendency to 
introspection and analysis must be satisfied by 
the disclosing of the inner connections and 
deeper reasons of the subjects taught. When 
these three conditions are fulfilled then, and 
only then, is secondary education being carried 
on upon a proper and a scientific basis. No 
amount of rearranging or reviewing elementary 
studies will make a secondary-school course. 
The characteristics to which I have just re- 
ferred must be present in order that a secondary- 
school course may be worthy of the name. 

A foreign language, ancient or modern, no 
matter at what age it is begun, is a secondary 
study because it invites and compels compari- 
son with the mother tongue and a more or 
less reflective analysis of the two vocabularies 
and the two sets of grammatical and syntactical 
forms. Algebra is a secondary study because 



212 



THE SCOPE AND FUNCTION 



Passage from 
elementary 
to secondary 
instruction 



of the symbolic and general character of its 
operations, and the rapidly increasing dif- 
ficulty of its processes. Formal grammar is a 
secondary study because of its dependence on 
the laws of logical thought and because of its 
abstract and analytic character. History, 
geography, and natural science tend to pass 
rapidly into the secondary form, no matter how 
simply and objectively they may be begun. 

From this it will be apparent that it is my 
opinion that secondary studies make their ap- 
pearance, and ought to make their appearance, 
in the upper grades of the elementary schools. 
The law of educational continuity demands 
this, and there is no other waj^ to escape from 
the dreaded arrested development which falls 
like a pall upon so many of our school children. 
As power is gained only by exercise, school- 
masters are beginning to find out that the 
quickest and surest way to lead pupils to the 
mastery of a given task is, after trying it a few 
times, not to review it indefinitely but to go 
forward to something more difficult. Good 
teaching will always keep a pupil's mind taut; 
to let it grow slack increases the friction and 
the waste. 

Just as secondary studies take their rise 
almost unnoticed among and out of the ele- 



OF SECONDARY EDUCATION 213 

mentary studies, so they pass insensibly into 
those of college grade. The college point of 
view is more elevated, its scope broader, its 
methods still more reflective and abstract than 
those of the secondary school; but no one can 
say dogmatically just where the one ends and 
the other begins. Custom and convenience 
play a large part in these matters. The order 
of studies is arranged with reference to many 
different considerations. The elements of Ar- 
abic and of Sanskrit are perhaps easier than 
the elements of Greek; yet no one would pro- 
pose to begin either Arabic or Sanskrit in the 
secondary school. Their historical relation to 
our civilization, the character of their content, 
and their relative importance all cause the 
postponement of the study of these languages 
to the college or to the university. It is 
apparent that not the relative difficulty of 
studies, but their relations to each other, to 
the developing powers of the pupil, and to 
contemporary civilization determine their order 
during the secondary and college periods. 

The secondary-school period, then, is es- 
sentially the period of adolescence, of what 
may be called active adolescence as distin- 
guished from the later and less violent mani- 
festations of physical and mental change that 



214 



THE SCOPE AND FUNCTION 



Disciplinary 
and selective 
functions of 
secondary 
instruction 



are now usually included under the term. The 
normal years are, with us, from twelve to six- 
teen, or from thirteen to seventeen. The normal 
boy or girl who is going to college ought to 
enter at seventeen, at the latest. A limitation 
of the secondary-school course to four years 
has been brought about chiefly by social and 
economic causes, but it can also be justified in 
a measure on physiological and on psychological 
grounds. 

The scope of secondary education includes 
the four years that I term those of active ado- 
lescence, from twelve or thirteen to sixteen or 
seventeen. Secondary-school studies must have 
the characteristics that I have enumerated, 
and for the reasons that I have stated. They 
are not sharply separated from elementary 
studies on the one hand or from college studies 
on the other. They grow easily and naturally 
out of the former and pass easily and gradually 
into the latter. 

The functions of secondary education de- 
pend largely upon our conception of its scope 
and upon conditions incidental thereto. These 
functions I class under two heads: (i) disci- 
plinary, (2) selective. The scientifically ad- 
justed secondary-school course should be made 
up of secondary studies arranged with reference 



OF SECONDARY EDUCATION 215 

to these two ends of discipline and selection, 
and with reference to these two ends alone. 
The secondary school, to succeed in its self- 
imposed task, must be, to borrow some technical 
terms from Kant, autonomous and not heter- 
onomous. It cannot give its pupils the best 
possible secondary education, and at the same 
time have its efficiency judged by its ability 
to fit some or all of its graduates to pass the 
tests prescribed in a thousand forms for col- 
lege entrance. My mind is perfectly clear that 
the relationship usually existing hitherto be- 
tween secondary school and college must be 
reversed; instead of the secondary-school pro- 
gramme having to conform to college-entrance 
requirements, college- entrance requirements 
must be brought into harmony with secondary- 
school programmes. Only an insignificant 
percentage of secondary-school pupils go for- 
ward to a higher institution of learning. It is 
important for our civilization and for our cul- 
ture that this percentage should be largely in- 
creased. In order to accomplish this, and at 
the same time to strengthen the position of 
secondary education "it is necessary " — I quote 
the authoritative words of the Committee of 
Ten — "that the colleges and scientific schools 
of the country should accept for admission to 



2l6 



THE SCOPE AND FUNCTION 



Passage from 
secondary 
school to 
college 



appropriate courses of their instruction the 
attainments of any youth who has passed 
creditably through a good secondary-school 
course, no matter to what group of subjects 
he may have mainly devoted himself in the 
secondary school." 1 

This position is so reasonable, and so ob- 
viously in the interest both of the college and 
of the secondary school, that it is a legitimate 
cause for surprise that it was not taken long 
ago by all colleges and scientific schools. That 
this has not happened is due in part to the 
lack of educational statesmanship on the part 
of those concerned with the formulation of 
college policy, and in part to the distressingly 
bad organization of much secondary-school 
work. In many parts of the country secondary- 
school work has been so poor, so scattering, and 
so lacking in purpose, that colleges have been 
unable to accept it as an adequate preparation 
for higher studies, even when they were so 
disposed. Conditions are rapidly improving 
in this respect, but they are still far from satis- 
factory. The chief difficulty with secondary- 
school courses is that they include too many 
subjects pursued for too short a time. The 



1 Report of the Committee of Ten on Secondary-School Studies 
(New York, 1894), p. 52. 



school 
programmes 



OF SECONDARY EDUCATION 217 

horrible spectre of "Fourteen Weeks," in this, 
that, or the other subject still haunts many 
schools, and an unintelligent ambition or a 
foolish local vanity contemplates it with ill- 
concealed satisfaction. When the Committee 
of Ten made their investigation they found 
that the programmes of forty unusually good 
secondary schools contained this appalling list 
of subjects: 

Languages: English, French, German, Span- Overcrowded 
ish, Latin, Greek — 6 ; mathematics : arith- 
metic, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, ana- 
lytic geometry, descriptive geometry — 6; 
natural science: mechanics, physics, chemistry, 
astronomy, geography, natural history — 6; and 
also rhetoric, drawing, surveying, music, physi- 
cal training, elocution, psychology, ethics, 
history, civil government, constitutional law, 
commercial law, political economy, stenography 
and typewriting, bookkeeping, penmanship, 
sacred studies — 17, or 35 subjects in all. The 
mere reading of these names must suggest to 
many of us programmes that we have seen in 
which the attempt has been made to provide 
for two-thirds or three-fourths of the entire 
list. The dissipation of energy and the shat- 
tering of the highly coveted power of concen- 
tration that must follow any attempt to keep 



2l8 



THE SCOPE AND FUNCTION 



Purpose of 
flexible and 
elective 
courses 



track of such an educational kaleidoscope can 
better be imagined than described. 

It is essential that studies should be organized 
in courses, and these courses may be as numer- 
ous and as diverse as the school can afford or 
as the community demands. These courses 
should not be rigid and compulsory: that in- 
volves another and hardly less serious danger. 
They should be flexible and elective, made by 
each pupil for himself with the aid of his parents 
and teachers. Each course should admit of at- 
tention to not more than five subjects at once, 
and each subject should be pursued long enough 
to gain such mastery of it as will cause it to 
yield to the student some considerable part of 
its educational value. My own preference is 
to have each subject followed for an entire 
academic year, at least. Think how little one 
knows of a foreign language, of any depart- 
ment of history, or of a natural science, after 
even a full year of study. 

These flexible and elective courses — the varie- 
ties of which would be very numerous to meet 
the diverse needs, tastes, and capacities of the 
students — must, of course, be organized about 
a common centre or core. After weighing care- 
fully the alternative propositions, I have come 
to the conclusion that this centre or core should 



OF SECONDARY EDUCATION 219 

be threefold, in order to combine genuine and 
well-proportioned discipline with abundant op- 
portunity to meet individual needs. The three 
constituent elements of this centre or core, I 
state in this way: (1) the study of language; 
(2) the study of deductive reasoning, in math- 
ematics and formal logic; (3) the study of in- 
ductive method, in experimental science, in 
vocational preparation, and, in part, in history. 
If it be provided that the course pursued by 
every student must contain a subject selected 
from each of these three classes, we may safely 
trust to the student's tastes, needs, and ambi- 
tions, together with the advice of his parents 
and teachers, both to select the specified sub- 
jects and to add to them others that lie out- 
side those classes. He cannot very well fail 
to make a satisfactory course. This arrange- 
ment suits equally well the student who has 
a college course in view, or his fellow who looks 
forward to a scientific school, an agricultural 
college, a technical institute, a business career, 
or indeed any other form of occupation. Each 
student will thus be given a chance to make 
the best use of his adolescent powers during 
the secondary-school period, and, under the 
limitations that I have suggested, he will be 
able, at the end of four years, to present to a 



220 THE SCOPE AND FUNCTION 

higher institution of learning a certificate of 
graduation that it cannot, and, I am convinced, 
will not refuse to accept. 

It is in this elimination of elementary studies 
from the secondary school, and in the frank 
recognition of the paramount advantages of 
the elective system, that I see the way of 
highest usefulness opening before the second- 
ary school. Instead of conducing to arrested 
development, it will then constantly spur the 
pupil on by putting new difficulties before him. 
Instead of dividing his attention and interest 
among eight, ten, or even twelve subjects each 
year, so frittering away his time and energy, it 
will focus them upon not more than five sub- 
jects, and pursue each far enough and long 
enough to gain real insight into it and genuine 
power over it. Instead of offering one or two 
rigid courses to a hundred students, no two 
of whom are just alike, it will make it possible 
(within the necessary limitations of the school's 
resources) for every pupil to have the course 
he most needs and yet one that has balance, 
harmony, and undisputed effectiveness. The 
disciplinary purpose of the secondary school 
will thus be gained. 

Its selective purpose is of almost equal im- 
portance. From what I have already said of 



OF SECONDARY EDUCATION 221 

the mental characteristics of children of sec- 
ondary-school age, it is evident that at that 
time new tastes and unsuspected powers make 
their appearance. The wise and observant 
teacher will seize upon these, and by bringing 
the pupil in contact with the best means for 
their development will promote the discovery 
whether they are superficial or deep, fleeting or 
permanent; he will then guide the pupil's 
studies accordingly. The result of this atti- 
tude is to assist materially a process of educa- 
tional selection by which pupils are trained for 
efficiency while gaining a sound secondary 
education as well. For it is not enough that 
our education should give pupils a knowledge 
of the civilization which surrounds them; it 
must also fit them to take hold of that civiliza- 
tion at some definite point and so to support 
themselves in it. That is, it must add efficiency 
to knowledge; and efficiency, in these days of 
highly organized and minutely differentiated 
societies, implies a great deal. No generation 
of pupils can be made efficient by any uniform 
course of study. Such a course will produce 
efficiency in those to whom it is best adapted; 
the others must go to the wall. A uniform 
course of secondary and collegiate study would, 
as higher education became general, result in 



222 THE SCOPE AND FUNCTION 

bread riots of the learned. It is the uniform 
course of gymnasial study in Germany, lasting 
through three generations, which that coun- 
try has to thank to-day for what Bismarck 
himself has called the educated proletariat. 

It would be futile to attempt to make the 
American secondary school an exact copy of 
any type of foreign school, however success- 
ful that type may have been. There are 
abundant reasons for adhering in our educa- 
tional aims to ideals that are the outgrowth 
of our own national conditions, and that are 
suited to them. The programme of studies of 
a German gymnasium, of a French lycee, or 
of an English public school, such as Eton or 
Rugby, we would not duplicate for our pupils 
even if we could. They would not bear trans- 
plantation; they would be an exotic in our 
system. But it is the high order of efficiency 
in their teachers, rather than the nature and 
scope of their programmes of study, that im- 
parts distinction to them, and toward the ob- 
taining of this high quality of secondary-school 
teacher that efforts must be directed in the 
United States. Professional ability and exact- 
ness in scholarly information cannot be dis- 
pensed with. Consummate knowledge and skill 
on the part of the teacher are the backbone of 



OF SECONDARY EDUCATION 223 

any and every successful system of secondary 
education. 

Mr. Herbert Spencer has told us that man- 
kind, like a group of men selected at hap- 
hazard, is made up of a few clever individu- 
als, many ordinary ones, and some decidedly 
stupid. The secondary school must recognize 
this fact, and not make the common mistake 
of trying to deal with a supposititious "average 
pupil": there is no average pupil. It is one of 
the most popular blunders of our contemporary 
thinking and writing to suppose that individ- 
uality can be disposed of by treating it in mass. 
We speak glibly of " man," of "the industrious," 
"the debtor class," "the intelligent," and so 
on, and imagine that the individuals included 
in the generalization have been satisfactorily 
disposed of and sharply marked off from all 
others. This is quite untrue. Human individ- 
uality and human capacity are not to be dis- 
posed of so lightly. These shorthand registra- 
tions of them and references to them are apt 
to be very misleading, and nowhere more so 
than in education. To treat individual pupils 
in this fashion is to ignore the selective func- 
tion of secondary education, and to prevent its 
operation. During the secondary-school period, 
I repeat, tastes are to be developed into capaci- 



224 THE SCOPE AND FUNCTION 

ties and each pupil started on that line of in- 
terest and activity that is best adapted to him. 
This is the element of truth that underlies the 
definition of secondary education, already 
quoted, given by the Royal Commission. 
Throughout the whole period of secondary 
instruction and accompanying the study of 
any subject whatsoever, the pupil should be 
taught four things: to observe, to record, to 
compare, and to express. Constant and rigor- 
ous training in these four acts will not only do 
all that the secondary school can do to fit its 
pupils for life, but it will give them the best 
possible preparation for any higher course of 
study which they may elect to pursue. 

A secondary education that is both dis- 
ciplinary and selective is of unusual importance 
in this country on both social and political 
grounds. Democracy needs intelligent and 
trained leadership — leadership in public policy, 
leadership in industry, in commerce, in finance, 
leadership in art and in letters. The basis of 
training for leadership is laid in the secondary 
schools, where the directive capacity of the 
nation is serving its apprenticeship. There the 
majority of the men and women who are to 
guide the destinies of the next generation are 
putting forth their powers and testing their 



OF SECONDARY EDUCATION 225 

strength; out of a variety of intellectual in- 
terests, nature and environment lead them to 
make a selection. Training — persistent, thor- 
ough, broad — in the field chosen, is the surest 
guarantee, if one can be given, of future success 
and of future usefulness. 



XII 

THE SECONDARY SCHOOL 
PROGRAMME 



An address before the Schoolmasters' Association of New 
York and vicinity, March 8, 1890 



THE SECONDARY SCHOOL 
PROGRAMME 

Matthew Arnold has reminded us that the 
secondary school is the most ancient of exist- 
ing educational institutions. It antedates the 
university by several centuries; and by its 
side the primary or elementary school, spring- 
ing as it does from needs and ideas that are 
comparatively modern, seems but a creature 
of yesterday. Moreover, the history of the 
secondary school is unbroken and easily trace- 
able. The monastery schools and the famous 
establishments at St. Gall, Reichenau, and 
Fulda are the direct ancestors of our Etons and 
Rugbys, of our contemporary lycees, gymnasia, 
and academies. 

In the United States the educational organi- Threefold 

i r • ! r -, 11 division of 

zation is so indefinite and unformed, and the instruction 
educational terminology in common use so un- 
systematic, that certain explanations are neces- 
sary before any discussion of the province and 
scope of the secondary school may be under- 
taken. The threefold division of instruction 
229 



230 SECONDARY SCHOOL PROGRAMME 

into primary or elementary, secondary, and 
superior, has been accepted by the Bureau of 
Education at Washington, and is in accord 
with the practise on the Continent of Europe. 
By superior instruction is meant that given in 
institutions empowered by law to confer de- 
grees. This may be either general or special, 
and includes in this country the colleges and 
universities as well as the professional schools 
of law, medicine, theology, education, agricul- 
ture, pharmacy, engineering, and the like. The 
implication is, though unfortunately not al- 
ways the fact, that these institutions for supe- 
rior instruction have required of applicants for 
admission the possession of an approved sec- 
ondary education. By primary or elementary 
instruction is meant such as the state is justi- 
fied in requiring of all children for its own 
safety and perpetuity. In the present state 
of educational science this may safely be held 
to include a knowledge of reading and writing, 
and some instruction in elementary arithmetic, 
geography, history, natural science, and manual 
training. This elementary education should 
begin not later than the sixth year of life, and 
with the average child seven years may be de- 
voted to it, although specially intelligent or 
studious children may be permitted, as in 



SECONDARY SCHOOL PROGRAMME 231 

France, to complete the prescribed studies in 
less time. 

It would seem natural, then, that the field Field of 
of secondary instruction should be that which ^teuctkm 
lies between the elementary and the superior 
schools. But this is not quite true. There is 
and can be no sharp line of division between 
the various grades of instruction. They pass 
gradually, even insensibly, into each other. 
In order to prevent the pupil's development 
from being arrested and his capacity for educa- 
tion from being brought to an end, he must 
constantly be led on to new heights. For this 
reason certain studies, usually classed as be- 
longing to secondary education, such as algebra 
and a foreign language, are very appropriately 
taught in the upper grades of the elementary 
school. A beginning in the field of secondary 
studies is therefore made before the limits of 
the elementary school are reached, and by the 
time that the pupil is twelve, eleven, or even 
ten years of age. This is actually the case with 
the French lycee and the Prussian gymnasium. 

At the upper end of the secondary school 
course a similar condition is found. There is 
no reason why many secondary schools, partic- 
ularly public high schools, over 60 per cent of 
whose graduates do not go on to a higher edu- 



232 SECONDARY SCHOOL PROGRAMME 



Effect of 
college- 
admission 
examinations 



cational institution, should not give instruc- 
tion in subjects such as logic, political economy, 
and trigonometry, which are contained in every 
college course. Unless this policy is adopted, 
the vast majority of American boys and girls 
will be deprived of all opportunity to come in 
contact with these studies and others like them. 
In the past the secondar}^ school in this 
country has been very often dwarfed in im- 
portance and deprived of its proper spontane- 
ity and individuality, because it has permitted 
itself to settle down to the routine task of 
preparing pupils for entrance examination to 
college, fixed and conducted by the college 
authorities. Whatever that entrance exami- 
nation demanded, and in some cases just a 
trifle more, has been taught; whatever such 
examination did not call for, no matter how 
important or valuable it might be for a boy's 
education, has not been taught. The second- 
ary school has been too largely dominated by 
the college; and in few cases has that domina- 
tion been other than unfortunate. As notable 
instances of the contrary effect may be men- 
tioned the stimulating influence of the more 
recent regulations regarding entrance examina- 
tions adopted by Harvard College, particularly 
in geometry and in physics, and the novel 



SECONDARY SCHOOL PROGRAMME 233 

unity and thoroughness imparted to the in- 
struction in English in the secondary schools 
by the action of the colleges in uniting with 
the schools in deciding upon a uniform scheme 
of requirements for entrance in that subject. 

It is neither proper nor dignified for the sec- 
ondary schools to continue in this condition of 
dependence upon college-entrance examina- 
tions. They should be independent and self- 
centred. By a careful study of the history and 
principles of education, coupled with the teach- 
ings of their own large experience, they should 
seek to devise that course of study and those 
methods of instruction that are best suited to 
the mental, moral, and physical development 
and culture of the boys and girls committed to 
their care. Nor need it be feared that in so 
doing they will interfere in any way with the 
preparation of their pupils for college work. 
For in education it is profoundly true that that 
which is intrinsically the best in any particular 
stage of development, is also the best prepara- 
tion for that which comes after. 

If the American boy is to obtain his bacca- Waste in 
laureate degree at the age of twenty or twenty- 
one (which is considerably more than a year 
later than the French boys leave the lycee, and 
the Prussian boys the gymnasium), he must be 



education 



234 SECONDARY SCHOOL PROGRAMME 

ready to enter college not later than seventeen; 
and this can be managed while actually pro- 
viding for the secondary school a more com- 
prehensive curriculum than at present obtains. 
Before discussing in detail the composition of 
such a curriculum, one or two preliminary 
considerations must be mentioned. They may, 
however, be dismissed very briefly, since they 
have so recently been treated with the highest 
authority by President Eliot. 1 The first of 
these has to do with the length of the school 
day and that of the vacations. The former 
should never be less than five full hours of 
study and school discipline; the tendency to 
shorten it any further is irrational and should 
be checked. A programme arranged on sound 
educational principles can occupy five hours 
a day easily enough without in any way im- 
pairing the pupil's health or lessening his in- 
terest, unless the teacher is peculiarly lacking 
in mental equipment and professional qualifi- 
cations. The vacations are now unduly long, 
and seem to be yielding to a certain strong 
social pressure to make them even longer. The 
old-fashioned summer vacation of four or six 
weeks has long since become one of ten or 

ia Can School Programmes be Shortened and Enriched?" 
Atlantic Monthly, August, 1888, pp. 250-8. 



SECONDARY SCHOOL PROGRAMME 235 

twelve, and in our city schools a summer vaca- 
tion of fifteen or even sixteen weeks is by no 
means a curiosity. It is the teacher who needs 
this vacation more than the pupil. But even 
from his standpoint the present practise has 
gone beyond reasonable bounds. The German 
method of giving three weeks at Easter, one 
at Pfingsten, six in midsummer, one at Michael- 
mas, and two at Christmas seems wiser than 
ours, for it makes a more frequent alternation 
between work and play. Perhaps sixteen 
weeks — including the recesses at Christmas 
and Easter and a long summer vacation, as 
better suited to our climate and habits of life 
than the German plan — might be agreed upon 
as the maximum period in which school duties 
may wisely be suspended each year. 

But in addition to the school year of thirty- Need of 
six weeks and twenty-five hours in each week, * etteT ~ d 
the secondary schools are sadly in need of secondary 
better-trained teachers. It is remarkable how teac ers 
entirely the teachers in these schools have re- 
mained uninfluenced by the great interest in 
the science and art of teaching which has of 
late years manifested itself both in this coun- 
try and in Europe. Secure in their possession 
of a considerable amount of knowledge and of 
more or less culture, the secondary school 



236 SECONDARY SCHOOL PROGRAMME 

teachers have not seemed to understand the 
significance or the value of a professional prep- 
aration. As a result their work has been done 
in a routine, imitative way, and their pupils 
have suffered. Most of the criticisms that may 
now be legitimately made upon the work of 
the secondary schools would be disarmed if 
the teachers in these schools were abreast of 
the present development of their art. One im- 
portant reason why the secondary schools have 
not felt this full measure of progress in methods 
of teaching that is so marked in the elementary 
schools, is that secondary teachers are usually 
college graduates, and the colleges have, until 
very recently, done so little to show that they 
are aware of what is being accomplished in the 
study of education. Consequently they have 
failed to contribute their proper proportion of 
duly qualified teachers. Until the colleges 
assume their full responsibility in this matter 
and endeavor to discharge it, the work of the 
secondary school, speaking broadly, will not be 
as well done as it might be. 
Aim of Assuming that more competent teachers are 

instruction at ^ an ^> an d tnat a school year of thirty-six 
weeks of twenty-five hours each is agreed upon, 
what should be the aim of the instruction in 
the secondary school, and with what curriculum 



SECONDARY SCHOOL PROGRAMME 237 

should it endeavor to accomplish it ? It should 
be the aim of the secondary school, I take it, 
by instruction and discipline to lay the founda- 
tion for that cultivation and inspiration that 
mark the truly educated man. In endeavor- 
ing to attain this ideal, the secondary school 
must not lose sight of the fact that it is educat- 
ing boys who are to assume the duties and 
responsibilities of citizenship, and who must, 
in all probability, pursue a specific calling for 
the purpose of gaining a livelihood. The fact 
that the secondary school has also a selective 
function to perform is often overlooked. Yet 
this is most important. Secondary school 
pupils are adolescents, and their tastes and 
capacities are rapidly forming and finding ex- 
pression. To afford opportunity for these to 
develop, and to encourage them to develop 
along the best and most effective lines, is an 
obvious duty of the secondary school. Be- 
cause they are not selective, many secondary 
courses of study are very ineffective. 

To prepare a course of study which shall Secondary 
keep all these points in mind, and at the same sch ° o1 

r r 7 programme 

time afford the developing intellect of the pupil of study 
that exercise of which it is capable, is not an 
easy task. Indeed, it presents some problems 
which but a little while ago seemed almost im- 



238 SECONDARY SCHOOL PROGRAMME 

possible of solution. But patience, wider ex- 
perience, and a careful study of the surround- 
ing conditions have lessened the difficulties. 
The chief of these is perhaps that created by 
the rapid development and present importance 
of scientific and technical schools. These in- 
stitutions represent a real and significant 
movement in modern civilization. They have 
complicated the question of a curriculum for 
secondary schools by demanding a preparation 
quite different from that required for entrance 
to the average American college. That the 
problem thus raised belongs to the field of 
secondary education in general and is not due 
to conditions prevailing in any one country 
alone, is shown by the fact that England, 
Germany, and France have all been brought 
face to face with it as we have been. In each 
of these countries much progress toward its 
solution has been made. In England the so- 
called "modern side" has been added to the 
traditional classical course. In France the 
lycee has its cours special in which mathematics 
and the sciences replace Latin ancf Greek. In 
Germany the well-established real-gymnasium 
and real-schule are every year justifying their 
right to exist on an equal plane with the gym- 
nasium itself. A specially interesting move- 



SECONDARY SCHOOL PROGRAMME 239 

ment in this connection is one in Germany 
which has for some time past been calling for 
the establishment of an Einheitss chide, in 
which the main features both of gymnasium 
and real-schule are to be combined. 

The appropriate course of study for the typ- 
ical American secondary school is one in which 
eight elements should always be represented: 
namely, the mother tongue, geography and his- 
tory, natural science, mathematics, Latin and 
Greek, French and German, drawing and con- 
structive work (manual training), and physical 
training. It combines some features of the 
English " modern side" with some of those of 
the French cours special, and is not unlike what 
German students of education have in mind 
under the name of Einheitsschule. It involves 
beginning the study of one foreign language at 
ten or eleven years of age, and the elements of 
algebra and of plane geometry shortly after- 
ward. Ample choice would be permitted to 
students, provided only that not more than 
five so-called "book" subjects were carried on 
at once, that no two new languages were begun 
at the same time, and that English, geography 
and history, and natural science were always 
represented. Pupils of a difFerent tempera- 
ment, of different points of view, and with 



240 SECONDARY SCHOOL PROGRAMME 

different purposes in life would be guided to 
express and to satisfy themselves to the fullest 
extent possible. The ability to read intelli- 
gently, to write legibly, and to perform under- 
standing^ and correctly with integers the four 
fundamental operations of arithmetic, must be 
insisted upon at ten years of age. 

The growing practise of postponing even 
this modicum of knowledge until after the 
tenth year is to be emphatically discouraged. 
Attention has recently been called to the fact 
that one of the best-known academies in the 
United States requires for admission only some 
knowledge of common-school arithmetic, writ- 
ing, spelling, and the elements of English 
grammar, and that the average age of pupils 
on entering is sixteen and one-half years. At 
this age the French boy is reading Cicero, Vir- 
gil, and Horace, Sophocles and Plato, Shaks- 
pere and Tennyson, as well as studying gen- 
eral history, solid geometry, and chemistry. 
His German contemporary is similarly ad- 
vanced. It is very evident that at this point 
there is a tremendous waste in our educational 
system. It must be remedied and remedied 
speedily, if our higher education is not to be 
discredited altogether. 

What is included under each of the topics 



SECONDARY SCHOOL PROGRAMME 241 

of study above enumerated may be briefly 
outlined. 

1. English — The study of the mother tongue English 
must not be neglected by any class of students. 
But it must be far better taught than now and 
with a different aim. That the instruction in 
English, both in school and college, has been 
sadly neglected and little developed in the 
past will not be denied. Perhaps no one but 
the college professor who requires original 
written work from his pupils knows how in- 
sufficient and inefficient the English teaching 
in the secondary school is. A very large propor- 
tion of those students who reach the bac- 
calaureate degree do not possess the ability to 
express with accuracy and conciseness, whether 
orally or in writing, even a simple train of 
thought. This woful neglect of the mother 
tongue has been largely due, as Paulsen points 
out is the case in Germany, to the great pre- 
ponderance of classical instruction and the 
impression that this afforded all the linguistic 
training necessary. We have gradually eman- 
cipated ourselves from the tyranny of this no- 
tion; and now the long-neglected study of the 
mother tongue is beginning to receive proper 
recognition in schools of every grade. Our 
ideals for this study are no longer satisfied by 



242 SECONDARY SCHOOL PROGRAMME 

the plodding through a grammar and by the 
memorizing of a few rules and canons of rhetoric. 
Language study, and particularly that of a tongue 
so rich, so versatile, and so intrinsically inter- 
esting as our own, means far more than that. 
The general aim of this instruction in the 
secondary school should be to impart a knowl- 
edge of the principal laws of structure and syn- 
tax, to develop ease, fluency, and correctness 
in speaking and writing, to point out the princi- 
pal stages in the history of English literature, 
and to bring the pupil to an acquaintance with 
some of the great masterpieces of prose and 
verse. Wide but carefully chosen reading and 
frequent and systematic exercises in composi- 
tion are the most efficient means of instruction. 
It should be remarked, however, that com- 
position writing is valuable only if the pupil's 
work is carefully and intelligently corrected 
and criticised. Otherwise it is a positive evil, 
for it serves to exaggerate, and make habitual 
faults already present in the use of language. 
It is of the highest importance that the pupil 
should be accustomed to hear correct English 
spoken. Downright inaccuracy of speech should 
be considered sufficient reason for a teacher's 
removal. A boy will learn more evil in a week 
from a bad example than he will derive good 



SECONDARY SCHOOL PROGRAMME 243 

from a book in a month. Most language in- 
struction should be oral and the pupil should 
from the very first take a large part in the 
exercises. As language is but the form and 
expression of thought, care should be taken to 
see that thought is always expressed by it. 
This cannot be the case if the pupil is forced 
ahead either too rapidly or in an unnatural 
course. The amount of time proposed for this 
branch of study is therefore comparatively 
large, and no class should be relieved of the 
necessity of writing dictation-exercises or com- 
positions at least as often as once a week. 
When this is done and done properly in the 
secondary school, the college instruction in 
English may enter upon that which really be- 
longs to it, and will no longer be compelled to 
devote itself, as now, almost wholly to what 
President Charles Kendall Adams once happily 
described as "the flagellation of bad English. " 
Nor should it be forgotten that the secondary 
school must bear its share in teaching pupils 
how and what to read, in the best and deepest 
sense of that phrase. No English instruction 
is entirely successful unless it implants in every 
pupil a love of the masters of thought and style, 
and a desire to grow more and more familiar 
with them. 



244 SECONDARY SCHOOL PROGRAMME 

Geography 2. Geography and History — These comple- 

and history me ntary studies, inseparable from each other 
and indispensable to a sound education, have 
also been sadly neglected in the secondary 
schools. We might truthfully say of the Amer- 
icans, as Breal said a few years ago of his fellow 
Frenchmen, that they are celebrated for their 
ignorance of geography. The subject has been 
so badly taught that it might almost as well 
have been passed over altogether. We are 
now beginning to follow the example set us by 
Germany in teaching geography, and perhaps 
in a few years it will be adequately presented 
in the schools. Geography has two distinct 
aims. It seeks to point out and describe the 
character, the divisions, the climate, and the 
configuration of the surface of the globe that 
we inhabit, and also to trace the modifications 
which man himself has made and the artificial 
divisions that he has marked off upon it. When 
dealing with the former questions geography is 
physical; when considering the latter it is 
political and commercial. It thus occupies a 
position between the natural and the historical 
sciences and connects the two. 

When geography is properly taught, the 
child is first led to observe his immediate sur- 
roundings. The points of the compass, relative 



SECONDARY SCHOOL PROGRAMME 245 

situations and distances, the real significance 
of a map may all be taught and best taught 
with reference to the city, town, or village in 
which the particular school is situated. The 
schoolroom should be well supplied with globes, 
relief-maps, charts, and other illustrative ma- 
terial, in order that, when the pupil passes from 
the consideration of his immediate surround- 
ings to that of localities at a distance, his 
understanding may receive the assistance of 
these symbolic representations. When political 
and commercial geography is undertaken, its 
close relation with history makes it both ad- 
visable and necessary to teach both subjects 
together. Perhaps no study that is pursued 
at this age brings to the pupil a richer store of 
facts or a greater intellectual stimulus than 
do these. Historical teaching proper will of 
course begin with the narration of the lives of 
great men, and the story of their achievements. 
About this as a nucleus may be grouped a 
considerable body of facts, and an account of 
the tendencies set in operation by leaders of 
thought and action. This mode of presenta- 
tion familiarizes the pupil from the first with 
the human factor, the spiritual force, in his- 
tory. The scope of the historical teaching in 
an American secondary school should include 



246 SECONDARY SCHOOL PROGRAMME 

an accurate knowledge of the main facts in 
the history of the United States and of England, 
as well as a general acquaintance with the 
progress of universal history. It will not omit 
the outlines of economic life, or fail to lead up 
to an acquaintance with modern economic and 
social problems. 
Mathematics 3. Mathematics — Whether or not Sir Wil- 
liam Hamilton was justified in his unfavorable 
judgment as to the value of mathematical 
study, it seems clear that our schools have 
devoted too much time to the subject. Under 
the guise of mathematics much has been taught 
that is not mathematics at all. Abstruse and 
very absurd problems and puzzles in logic are 
to be found in almost every mathematical text- 
book under the delusive heading of " Examples. " 
These simply vex and discourage the student 
and arouse in him a distaste for what is really 
valuable and practical in mathematical study. 
They should be passed over entirely, as should 
also many of the complexities of commercial 
arithmetic, and all but three or four of the 
tables of weights and measures. The metric 
system must be taught as a matter of course. 
The elements of plane geometry should precede 
algebra for every reason known to sound educa- 
tional theory. It is more fundamental, it is 



SECONDARY SCHOOL PROGRAMME 247 

more concrete, and it deals with things and 
their relations rather than with symbols. In 
the form of what the Germans call Raumlehre, 
many geometrical facts would be taught from 
the first, in the proposed curriculum, under 
the head of drawing and constructive work. 
When the formal proofs of geometry are later 
entered upon, they will therefore be seen to 
be easy and natural, rather than difficult and 
wholly strange. Good teaching in mathematics 
should enable the student who follows a classical 
course during the last three years in the sec- 
ondary school to enter college with a good 
understanding of arithmetic, algebra, and ge- 
ometry, both plane and solid. The student 
selecting a scientific course in the secondary 
school could add to this a knowledge of analytic 
geometry, of trigonometry, and perhaps of 
determinants as well. 

4. Natural Science — This is a term of wide Natural 
and varying significance. As used here, it has science 
two meanings. During the earlier years of 
the course, it is equivalent to the term Natur- 
beschreibung as used in German school pro- 
grammes. Applied to the later years, it means 
the experimental study of chemistry and 
physics. In the lower grades it is not spe- 
cifically physics or chemistry or geology or 



Greek 



248 SECONDARY SCHOOL PROGRAMME 

botany or physiology or astronomy that is 
studied, but something of all these. The sub- 
ject-matter is found in the facts of nature which 
surround the child on every hand, and which 
should be as familiar to him as the names he 
hears. This instruction aims to open the pupil's 
eyes, to teach him how and what to see, and 
to appreciate what the word nature means. 
It is the most fascinating of school studies; 
and it complements and runs into almost every 
other subject. 
Latin and 5. Latin and Greek — In the secondary schools 

of Europe, Latin still occupies the leading 
place. Greek is begun later than Latin, and 
when the Latin is well taught Greek needs less 
time and effort for the mastery of so much of 
it as is desirable during the period of secondary 
instruction. Inasmuch as both serve practically 
the same purpose in education, they may prop- 
erly be spoken of under a single head. 

It seems quite safe to predict that no culture 
will ever be considered broad and deep unless 
it rests upon an understanding and apprecia- 
tion of the civilizations of Greece and Rome. 
Whether such culture is necessary or even im- 
portant for the great body of the population, 
and whether the classics are properly taught or 
not, are very different questions from that 



SECONDARY SCHOOL PROGRAMME 249 

which is raised as to their educational value. 
It is only as respects one or the other of the 
former that recent criticism and attack have 
been in any degree successful. The classics 
have suffered from being forced upon those who 
cared nothing for them and would care nothing. 
They have also suffered, and very severely, 
through the waste of time they have involved. 
But both of these objections may be removed 
without weakening in any degree the position 
of the classics. To the charge of bad and 
wasteful methods of classical teaching, much of 
it done under the guise of thoroughness, the 
schools must plead guilty. They have been en- 
deavoring to make philologists out of the 
material afforded by the average schoolboy. 
The greatest value of the classics is found in 
the ability to read and understand the great 
poets, philosophers, and historians who wrote 
for all time in the Greek and Latin tongues. 
The boasted discipline of classical study for 
the attention and reasoning powers may be 
quite as well obtained from studies which touch 
more closely the practical life of the great mass 
of the population. This argument is, there- 
fore, not only unsound, but needless for the 
classicist to use, since he has at his command 
others that are stronger and more effective. 



250 SECONDARY SCHOOL PROGRAMME 

To know something of the spirit of Sophocles, 
Demosthenes, and Plato, of Cicero, Horace, 
and Tacitus, and to understand the civiliza- 
tions and the points of view that they repre- 
sent, are, from one point of view, almost enough 
to give the fortunate one a claim to culture. 
The wearisome grammatical drill and the te- 
dious reiteration of details that are relatively of 
little value, save in so far as these are absolutely 
necessary to enable the pupil to read intelli- 
gently, are out of place in secondary education. 
The proper aim of classical instruction at this 
period is stated with great clearness and force 
in the comments on the course of study fur- 
nished by the Prussian minister of public 
instruction to the teachers in the most success- 
ful secondary school yet devised, the gym- 
nasium. The minister says: 

So far as the end to be attained by a knowledge of lan- 
guage is concerned, it is hardly necessary to adduce argu- 
ments to justify the proposition that the acquisition of 
a vocabulary is of at least as much importance as famili- 
arity with grammatical details. For it is just by means 
of this vocabulary that satisfaction is gained as facility 
in reading is acquired; by means of it, too, interest in 
reading extends beyond the period of school life. The 
aim of the gymnasium is not, however, attained when the 
pupils are able merely to read works of a certain degree 
of difficulty. Emphasis is much rather to be laid upon the 



SECONDARY SCHOOL PROGRAMME 251 

fact that they have read works of a certain scope and 
character, and upon the manner in which they have read 
them. As regards the method of reading, two points must 
be kept in mind; it must be based upon verbal accuracy 
and it must lead to an appreciation of the thought which 
is expressed and the form chosen for its expression. On 
the former consideration rests the disciplinary value of 
the classics; on the latter the basis of that which, when 
fully developed, is designated as classical culture. A 
treatment of this reading which neglects grammatical and 
lexical exactness, leads to superficiality; a treatment 
which makes the acquisition of grammatical and lexical 
exactness the main aim of reading, overlooks a funda- 
mental reason for the teaching of Latin in the gymnasium. 
Special attention must be called to this latter error, for 
it endangers both the interest of the students in the study 
of the ancient languages and the reputation of the gym- 
nasium among its most thoughtful supporters, by turning 
the teaching of the classics, even in the highest grades, 
into a mere repetition of grammatical rules and a memo- 
rizing of minute details as to synonyms and style. 

This applies to the United States quite as 
well as to Prussia, and to the study of Greek 
as much as to that of Latin. When these di- 
rections are followed it will be easy enough to 
read considerably more of the classics than is 
now done in the secondary schools, and to do 
it in the time at the teacher's disposal. It may 
also be observed that the grammatical details 
of different languages, when alike, should be 



252 SECONDARY SCHOOL PROGRAMME 

studied once for all and not repeated for every 
new language taken up. Devices for carrying 
out this suggestion have been prepared under 
the form of parallel grammars, and are now 
used in a few schools both in this country and 
in Great Britain. 

As a rule the classical teacher has not appre- 
ciated the changed educational conditions and 
the new demands made upon the schools. He 
has therefore provoked antagonism when he 
should have invited co-operation. He must 
recognize that while the secondary school can- 
not dispense with the classics, it can no longer 
be completely dominated by them. Yet he 
must insistently make it plain that the study of 
the literature and the life of Greece and Rome 
means to the modern European or American 
precisely what the study of embryology means 
to the biologist and the study of social origins 
to the economist and the political scientist. 
French and 6. French and German — These are indispen- 

sable in the secondary school. It was Goethe 
who said: "A man who knows only his own 
language does not know even that." One 
modern language should be begun early and 
studied continuously for several years. To 
some it may seem a matter of indifference 
whether French or German is first taken up. 



German 



SECONDARY SCHOOL PROGRAMME 253 

But French seems to offer to the English-speak- 
ing student more difficulties of pronunciation 
and of idiom than German, and should there- 
fore be begun before the pupil has acquired 
very fixed notions of grammatical and rhetorical 
canons. Moreover, the relation between French 
and Latin seems to furnish a good reason for 
making the two, to a certain extent, interde- 
pendent and illustrative, the one of the other. 
An ability to read French, to understand it 
when spoken, and in some measure to write 
it and to speak it having been attained, the 
mastery of a certain amount of German will 
involve fewer difficulties, and the boy may 
enter college or the scientific school with a good 
reading knowledge, and perhaps something 
more, of both of these indispensable keys to 
culture; or he may postpone the second modern 
language until the college period is entered 
upon. There are now reasons of practical im- 
portance and convenience why Spanish should 
be taught in American secondary schools, par- 
ticularly in view of the rapidly developing rela- 
tions — business, social, and political — with the 
other American republics. 

7. Drawing and Constructive Work — To in- Drawing and 
troduce this subject generally into the secon- 
dary schools of this country would be a new 



constructive 
work 



254 SECONDARY SCHOOL PROGRAMME 

departure. It is so, however, only because 
these schools have not been doing their duty 
by the pupils intrusted to them. Taken to- 
gether, drawing and constructive work con- 
stitute what is properly called manual training, 
the educational value of which has been estab- 
lished beyond all contravention both by argu- 
ment and by experiment. It aims to develop 
in the pupil powers of thought-expression that 
no other study reaches, as well as to train the 
judgment, to call out the executive powers, 
and to give self-confidence in dealing with 
actual material. It serves also to illustrate 
much of the instruction in mathematics and 
in natural science. Many secondary school 
pupils may wish to follow manual training be- 
yond the mere rudiments, and with more espe- 
cial reference to its scientific and technological 
applications. 

It may be added, for the sake of definite- 
ness, that the constructive work will naturally 
employ for its material pasteboard, clay, soft 
wood, and metal successively. It is at this 
point in particular that vocational prepara- 
tion will make its appearance in the field of 
secondary education. According as these topics 
of drawing and constructive work are more 
completely developed and emphasized, so will 



SECONDARY SCHOOL PROGRAMME 255 

the secondary school take on more and more 
the characteristics of an institution having in 
view preparation for various practical activi- 
ties. 

8. Physical Training — For obvious reasons Physical 
this important subject finds a place in every trainm g 
part of the course. More time is to be allotted 
to it in the earlier years because at that time 
the pupil is less accustomed to the confinement 
of the schoolroom and to the strain of con- 
tinuous mental exertion. At this stage, too, 
important physical habits are formed, for in- 
stance those of breathing, walking, and sitting; 
and when formed correctly they reduce some- 
what the time necessary for systematic bodily 
training. Whenever possible this physical 
training might be given in the open air of a 
playground. Such an arrangement not only 
involves a change of surroundings and conse- 
quent rest for the pupil, but it means purer 
air in the lungs, purer blood in the veins, and 
an accompanying exhilaration that is in itself 
a powerful tonic, mental and physical. A 
valuable and indeed indispensable accessory of 
physical training is play, the free, unimpeded, 
wilful activity of the child. So great is its value 
that many are of opinion that it makes syste- 
matic physical training unnecessary. On this 



256 SECONDARY SCHOOL PROGRAMME 

point I shall merely quote Doctor Hartwell, 
who seems to me to have correctly expressed 
the relation between play and systematic exer- 
cise in his admirable address before the Physical 
Training Conference held in Boston in Novem- 
ber, 1889. Doctor Hartwell, in speaking of 
this matter, said: 

I have no disposition to disparage athletic sports. I 
would that they were more general and better regulated 
than they are in our country. I believe that they are 
valuable as a means of recreation; that they conduce to 
bodily growth and improvement; and that their moral 
effects are of value, since they call for self-subordination, 
public spirit, and co-operative effort, and serve to reveal 
the dominant characteristics and tendencies, as regards 
the temper, disposition, and force of will of those who 
engage in them. But they bear so indelibly the marks 
of their childish origin, they are so crude and unspecialized 
as to their methods, as to render them inadequate for the 
purposes of a thorough-going and broad system of bodily 
education. It is well to promote them, and it is becom- 
ing increasingly necessary to regulate them; but it is 
unsafe and short-sighted to consider them as constituting 
anything more than a single stage in the best bodily 
training. 

When play and physical training are thus 
carefully distinguished, each is seen to have 
an educational function of its own and neither 
will be substituted for the other. Both are 
necessary in education. 



SECONDARY SCHOOL PROGRAMME 257 

It is believed that a course made up of these 
nine lines of study well distributed will meet 
all the intellectual wants of the boy from his 
eleventh to his eighteenth year, and will afford 
him a harmonious and complete training. 
Whether the pupil enters an institution of 
higher grade or not, he will have had an edu- 
cation substantially complete in itself. Yet 
for the studies of a higher institution he will 
have received an admirable preparation. The 
secondary school is in this way enabled to 
preserve its place in the general educational 
organization of the country without sacrificing 
its independence. 

No less a man than Darwin has recorded the The 
fact that his school-days, so far as his educa- school and 
tion was concerned, were an utter blank. Not life 
infrequently men of less reputation, but yet 
prominent in their respective callings, express 
a similar opinion. This in itself is a danger- 
signal, and must be heeded. The school may 
not with impunity remain long out of touch 
with the spirit which animates the intellectual 
leaders of an age or generation. Its task grows 
more difficult as civilization grows more com- 
plex. "The most incessant occupation of the 
human intellect throughout life," said John 
Stuart Mill in his inaugural address as rector 



258 SECONDARY SCHOOL PROGRAMME 

of St. Andrews University, "is the ascertain- 
ment of truth/' The standards of truth and 
the methods for its discovery must be revealed 
in and by the process of education. When this 
process has been carried so far as to entitle the 
resulting education to be called liberal, as 
Huxley for example has defined a liberal educa- 
tion, the youth is prepared to live not for him- 
self alone, but for the society of which he forms 
a part and for the race of which he is a member. 
If the secondary school fails to obtain this 
larger view, its training will hardly contribute 
to an education which shall be, in the language 
of Rollin, "the source of certain peace and 
happiness both in the family and in the state." 



XIII 

THE AMERICAN COLLEGE AND THE 
AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 



An Introduction to Paulsen's German Universities, Their 
Character and Historical Development (New York, 
1895) 



THE AMERICAN COLLEGE AND THE 
AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 

Nowhere, outside of the German-speaking 
countries themselves, have the German uni- 
versities been so highly appreciated and so 
widely imitated as in the United States. Just 
as the historic American college traces its ori- 
gin in direct line to Oxford and Cambridge 
and their influence, so the new American uni- 
versity represents, to a remarkable degree, the 
influence and authority of the academic tradi- 
tions of Heidelberg and Gottingen, of Leipsic 
and Berlin. 

The distinction between the function of the Distinction 
college and that of the university, which be- be * ween 

° J 7 college and 

comes clearer day by day to the student of university 
education, has thus far proved too subtle to 
reach the understanding and too commonplace 
to satisfy the pride of the American people; 
for the existing terminology inextricably con- 
fuses colleges and universities, and sometimes 
even institutions that are little more than 
secondary schools, and it taxes the patience 
261 



262 THE AMERICAN COLLEGE AND 

and skill of the expert to disentangle them. If 
we cut the Gordian knot by allowing every in- 
stitution founded for any form or phase of 
higher education to classify itself by the name 
that it assumes, then there are no fewer than 
134 universities in the United States. 1 Of 
these, 7 are in Illinois (although the new Uni- 
versity of Chicago was not included in the 
enumeration of 1 890-1), 8 are in Kansas, 14 are 
in Ohio, 9 are in Tennessee (of which total the 
city of Nashville alone, with about 80,000 in- 
habitants, contributes 3), 8 are in Texas, and 
4 are in the city of New Orleans. When this 
surprising number is compared with the total 
of 20 universities for the whole German Em- 
pire, it is evident, without further investiga- 
tion, that there is some difference in standard 
between the two countries, and that to be a 
university in fact is something more than to 
be a university in name. 

According to another extreme view, there 
are no American universities whatever. Only 
two years ago so distinguished an authority as 
Professor von Hoist, formerly of Freiburg but 
now attached to the University of Chicago, 
said: 2 

1 Report of the Commissioner of Education, 1890-1, pp. 1398— 

1413. 

2 Educational Review (1893), V, 113. 



THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 263 
There is in the United States as yet not a Are there 

American 
universities? 



single university in the sense attached to the / 



word by Europeans. All the American insti- 
tutions bearing this name are either compounds 
of college and university — the university, as an 
aftergrowth, figuring still to some extent as a 
kind of annex or excrescence of the college — 
or hybrids of college and university, or, finally, 
a torso of a university. An institution wholly 
detached from the school work done by col- 
leges, and containing all the four faculties 
organically connected to a Universitas literarum> 
does not exist." 

Inasmuch as there is no common agreement 
among Europeans as to what the term "uni- 
versity" means — as may readily be seen by 
contrasting the University of Oxford with the 
University of France, and either or both with 
the University of Berlin — Professor von Hoist 
obviously meant by European, German; and 
his definition of a university bears out this 
interpretation. With this limitation his judg- 
ment may be accepted as technically correct; 
but it rests upon two false assumptions: (1) 
that exact reproductions of the German uni- 
versities should be developed in the United 
States, and that until this development takes 
place there will be no American universities; 



264 THE AMERICAN COLLEGE AND 

and (2) that the American college is to be 
classed with the German gymnasium as a sec- 
ondary school. Into these two blunders those 
observers of American educational organiza- 
tion who occupy the exclusively German point 
of view habitually fall; and in more than one 
instance the truest and most natural develop- 
ment of higher education in America has been 
impeded and retarded by the attempt, on the 
part of those who share Professor von Hoist's 
errors, to force that development into the ex- 
act channels worn by German precedent. 

The American university may, or rather 
must, learn the lessons that its German prede- 
cessor has to teach, but it should be expected 
to develop also characteristics peculiar to it- 
self. In order to become great — indeed, in 
order to exist at all — a university must rep- 
resent the national life and minister to it. 
When the universities of any country cease 
to be in close touch with the social life and in- 
stitutions of the people, and fail to yield to 
the efforts of those who would readjust them, 
their days of influence are numbered. The 
same is true of any system of educational 
organization. For this reason alone, if for no 
other, an educational organization closely fol- 
lowing the German type would not thrive in 



THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 265 

America; indeed, with all its undisputed ex- 
cellences, the German system would not meet 
our needs so well as the yet unsystematic, but 
remarkably effective, organization that cir- 
cumstances have brought into existence. There- 
fore Professor von Hoist is not likely at any time 
to see a single university in the United States, 
if he persists in giving to that word its technical 
German significance. But using the word in a Definition of 
broader, and, I believe, a truer sense — the sense a umversit y 
that, while not confounding it with a college, 
however large or however ancient, nor apply- 
ing it mistakenly to a college and a surrounding 
group of technical and professional faculties 
or schools, yet extends the term to include 
any institution where students, adequately 
trained by previous study of the liberal arts and 
sciences, are led into special fields of learning 
and research by teachers of high excellence 
and originality; and where, by the agency of 
libraries, museums, laboratories, and publica- 
tions, knowledge is conserved, advanced, and 
disseminated — in this sense one may perhaps 
count six or eight American universities in 
existence to-day, and half as many more in 
the process of making. 

To confuse the American college with the 
German gymnasium is inexcusable. Neither 



266 THE AMERICAN COLLEGE AND 

The a large college like Princeton, nor a smaller 

American Qne j-j^ \yiift ams or Bowdoin, can be imag- 
ined as part of the gymnasial system. The 
American college is, in the phrase of Tacitus, 
tantum sui similis; neither the English pub- 
lic school, the French lycee, nor the German 
gymnasium, is its counterpart. Its free stu- 
dent-life and broad range of studies liken it 
in some degree to a university; but the imma- 
turity of its students, the necessarily didactic 
character of most of the work of its instruc- 
tors, and the end that it has in view mark it 
off as belonging to a different type. The col- 
lege has proved to be well suited to the demands 
of American life and to be a powerful force in 
American civilization and culture. Its use- 
fulness is in nowise impaired or its dignity 
lessened now that the university, with a wholly 
different aim and a totally different set of prob- 
lems to solve, has grown up by its side. As 
President Hyde, of Bowdoin College, has truly 
and forcibly said: 1 "For combining sound 
scholarship with solid character; for making 
men both intellectually and spiritually free; 
for uniting the pursuit of truth with reverence 
for duty, the small college [and the large as 
well], open to the worthy graduates of every 

1 Educational Review (1891), II, 320, 321. 



THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 267 

good high school, presenting a course suf- 
ficiently rigid to give symmetrical develop- 
ment and sufficiently elastic to encourage in- 
dividuality along congenial lines, taught by 
professors who are men first and scholars after- 
ward, governed by kindly personal influence 
and secluded from too frequent contact with 
social distractions, has a mission which no 
change of educational conditions can take 
away, and a policy which no sentiment of 
vanity or jealousy should be permitted to turn 
aside." 

In 1 89 1 there was one student enrolled in a The college 
college of the liberal arts and sciences for every popu 
1,363 inhabitants of the United States. 1 Count- 
ing five persons to a family, 2 this means that 
one family in every 272.6, the country over, 
contributed to the college population. Of 
course, in some sections of the country the 
ratio was much less. In Massachusetts, for 
example, there was one college student for 
every 858 of population, or one for every 17 1.6 
families. In Iowa the proportion was one to 
908 persons, or 181. 6 families; in Utah, one 
to 789 persons, or 157.8 families. These statis- 
tics, read in relation to the vast extent of the 

1 Report of the Commissioner of Education, 1890-1, p. 827. 

2 The actual ratio in the United States in 1890 was 4.93 (see 
Abstract of the Eleventh Census, 1890, p. 54). 



268 THE AMERICAN COLLEGE AND 

territory of the United States and to the 
heterogeneousness of its population of 70,000,- 
000, are ample proof, if proof were needed, 
that the college is a very familiar feature in 
American life, and that it supplies the educa- 
tional needs of the people to a remarkable 
degree. 
The college Of the 48 1 American colleges, perhaps no 

p J ogramme two have precisely the same course of study 
or the same equipment; but the common 
features that distinguish them are well known. 
The ancient classics, mathematics, the English 
language and literature, the modern European 
languages, the natural sciences, economics, and 
philosophy are doubtless represented to some 
extent in every college curriculum; yet every 
phase of educational opinion and every variety 
of local interest are represented in the details 
of their arrangement. But we may be sure 
that wherever it is found, whether on the 
Atlantic seaboard, in some inland town of the 
West or South, or on the Pacific slope, the 
college is a force making for a broader intel- 
lectual life and a higher type of citizenship. 
It leaves to the university the task of educat- 
ing specialists, investigators, and scientifically 
trained members of the learned professions. 
The diversity of the college when contrasted 



TEE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 269 

with the uniformity of the gymnasium makes 
it plain that the American university does not 
rest upon any uniform and closely controlled 
foundation. American students come to the 
university with very varied preparation in 
knowledge and training. But if the healthy 
forces recently set at work in the field of Amer- 
ican higher education bring about their legiti- 
mate results, the efficiency of the university 
and its power for good will be distinctly in- 
creased rather than diminished by the fact that 
its students are not all cast in a common mould. 
The principles of the limited election of studies 
and of the adaptation of the curriculum to the 
pupil, rather than the pupil to the curriculum, 
are as sound when applied in the secondary 
school as in the college, and the scope of their 
application widens year by year. The Amer- 
ican college graduate who desires a university 
career is thus enabled to enter upon it a broadly 
and liberally educated man, with tastes formed 
and aptitudes developed, ready to undertake 
with immediate advantage the specialized work 
for the sake of which the university exists. 
He is much more widely, though certainly less 
minutely, trained than the German Abiturient. 
In one very important respect the American 
system of higher education is distinctly supe- 



270 THE AMERICAN COLLEGE AND 



Higher 
education in 
America and 
in Germany 



rior to the German. In Germany a clear-cut 
dividing line between the gymnasium and the 
university is drawn by the complete and care- 
fully preserved difference in method, in spirit, 
and in ideal that exists between them. The 
contrast between the narrowness of the gym- 
nasium and the generous freedom of the uni- 
versity is very sharp, and many a university 
student loses his balance entirely, or wastes 
much precious time and force, in adjusting 
himself to his totally new surroundings. In 
America, on the contrary, the college and the 
university sometimes exist side by side in the 
same corporation, as at Harvard, Johns Hop- 
kins, Columbia, and Chicago, and the work of 
the one passes gradually and insensibly into 
that of the other. Even when, as is generally 
the case, the college exists as a thing apart, 
the later years of its course of study are so 
organized and conducted as to make the transi- 
tion from college to university easy and natural. 
This practise is sound in psychology, sound in 
economics, and sound in common sense. Its 
practical success is amply demonstrated by the 
fact that there is no American university— un- 
less that name be given to the few partially 
developed departments of study represented 
at Worcester, Massachusetts — that is not in the 
closest relation to a college which is a member 



THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 271 

of the same corporation. The institutions that 
to Professor von Hoist are "compounds of col- 
lege and university " are, therefore, not, as he 
evidently thinks, compounds of gymnasium 
and university, but the peculiar product of 
the American educational organization and 
its peculiar strength. 

But though the foundation on which uni- 
versity work in America rests differs and will 
continue to differ from that provided in Ger- 
many by a uniform system of state-controlled 
gymnasiums, the university itself is essentially 
the same; indeed, its organization has been 
effected largely by men who had studied in 
the German universities, and who desired to 
develop in the United States a similar vehicle 
for the highest form of the scientific activity 
of the nation. The three fundamental princi- 
ples that the German universities have estab- 
lished and brilliantly illustrated, Lehrfreiheit, 
Lernfreiheit, and the pursuit of science for its 
own sake, are fully recognized in the American 
universities; although it cannot be said that 
the third principle is as fully lived up to as it 
ought to- be. Professor Paulsen has himself 
pointed out in his latest publication on the 
subject 1 that the peculiar character of the Ger- 
man university lies in the fact that it closely 

1 Deutsche Rundschau, September, 1894. 



272 THE AMERICAN COLLEGE AND 

connects research and teaching. At present 
complaint is made that the one aim, research, 
is too largely pursued at the expense of the 
other, with the undoubted result, as a German 
university professor admits, 1 that, considered 
merely as teaching institutions, the American 
universities surpass the German in efficiency. 
The emphasis often laid on teaching, at the 
Teaching and expense of research, in the American universi- 

research t j eg { g l arge ly J ue to t h e f act t h at ^ j^ er 

generation of American university professors 
are men who were for many years engaged in 
the work of purely collegiate teaching, and 
they have neither outgrown nor cast off the 
habits and methods of years, nor combined re- 
search with teaching in any marked degree. 
This, of course, is quite as much to be depre- 
cated as an exaggeration of the opposite ten- 
dency. The younger generation of university 
teachers, however, a large proportion of whom 
have been trained in Germany, combine re- 
search with teaching in almost every instance; 
though, happily, research is not yet reduced 
to work with "the lens, electrode, test-tube, 
and psychometer," which apparently seems to 
Doctor G. Stanley Hall to cover the field of 

1 Professor Hugo Miinsterberg, quoted in Educational Review 
(1894), VII, 204. 



THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 273 

possible investigation. 1 It is possible, of course, 
in the enthusiastic devotion to research to over- 
look entirely or to minimize the need of good 
teaching in universities, and also to exaggerate 
the influence of research in producing good 
teachers; but from present indications, this is 
not a source of immediate danger in the United 
States. Our wisest university teachers are in 
agreement with Virchow, who said recently 2 
that the aim of university study is "general 
scientific and moral culture together with the 
mastery of one special department of study." 
The main obstacle to the full establishment 
in America of the pursuit of science for its own The technical 

1 n • • .... school in the 

sake, as a controlling university principle, is un i versity 
the development and rapid growth of technical 
schools, with low standards of entrance, in con- 
nection with universities, and their admission 
to a full and even controlling share in univer- 
sity legislation and administration. Indeed, in 
this lies the chief danger to the integrity of 
American university development. Thus far 
the Johns Hopkins University has escaped 
these influences entirely, and Harvard Uni- 
versity and Columbia University have been 



1 See " Research the Vital Spirit of Teaching," The Forum, 
August, 1894. 

2 Lernen und Forschen (Berlin, 1892), p. 8. 



274 THE AMERICAN COLLEGE AND 

able to hold them in check. But at some other 
institutions they are strong and menacing. 
The danger consists in allowing the claim that 
closely specialized work in a purely technical or 
professional branch, entered upon without any 
broad preparatory training whatever, is to be 
regarded as legitimate university work and en- 
titled to the time-honored university recogni- 
tion and rewards. It need hardly be pointed 
out to the intelligent reader that the tendency 
to do this is under full headway in the United 
States, and that its essential narrowness and 
philistinism increase with its success in estab- 
lishing itself. The general public attribute 
unmerited scientific importance to technical 
schools established in connection with colleges 
and universities because of their large enrol- 
ment; and governing boards look upon them 
with favor both because of the influence they 
exert through their graduates and because they 
are often important sources of revenue. Both 
facts tend to divert attention and funds from 
the pursuit of science as an end in itself, and 
to keep that principle from controlling univer- 
sity policy as it should. The difficulty would 
be diminished, and perhaps removed, if these 
technical schools (law, medicine, technology, 
and the like) were put upon a true university 



TEE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 275 

basis by insisting upon a liberal education as 
a prerequisite for admission to them. This 
would bring about a condition analogous to 
that which prevails in Germany, and would 
raise the American universities to a plane that 
they have never yet occupied. For there are 
as yet very few professional schools in Amer- 
ica of full university rank. Most professional 
and technical schools admit to their courses 
and degrees immature students who have had 
only a partial secondary school training, or 
often no training at all. When such a state 
of affairs exists within a university organiza- 
tion, it is apparent that the technical or pro- 
fessional schools are an injury rather than a 
legitimate source of pride and strength, no 
matter how many hundreds of students they 
may attract. Indeed, the larger they become 
the greater is their influence for evil, for their 
teaching is necessarily brought down to the 
level of the least-trained intelligences among 
the heterogeneous body of students, and in this 
way the standard of the whole university is 
lowered. 

So far as this tendency exists in the case of Schools of 
schools of applied science, it must be confessed J^Lwe 
that its existence is largely due to the attitude 
of the partisans of the old-fashioned uniform 



276 TEE AMERICAN COLLEGE AND 



Schools of 
law and of 
medicine 



college course. By refusing to mathematical 
and scientific studies an equal place by the side 
of Greek and Latin, they forced the schools of 
science to establish themselves — in many cases 
on the narrowest possible educational basis — 
outside of the college and in competition with 
it; when, with a broad and generous treatment 
of the problems involved, the scientific or tech- 
nical course might have been grafted on the 
college in a way that would have been of in- 
estimable value both to the technical school 
and to the college, and greatly to the advantage 
of the cause of liberal education. The time 
when this could have been accomplished easily 
is past; but it can yet be brought about if 
undertaken in the right spirit and with wisdom. 
It is seemingly impossible for universities 
generally to raise their schools of law and 
medicine to university rank in the face of 
public indifference as to the educational quali- 
fications of lawyers and physicians. How long 
this indifference will continue unmoved, there 
are no means of determining. Here and there 
efforts are making to insist upon some portion, 
at least, of a secondary education as a quali- 
fication for admission to schools of law and 
medicine. But as a rule admission to the prac- 
tise of those professions is open to any one, 



THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 277 

however ignorant, who will serve a short term 
of apprenticeship. This arrangement is some- 
times defended on the ground that many men 
have in the past greatly distinguished them- 
selves as lawyers or physicians, though with- 
out any liberal education whatever. This is 
true, but they were rare exceptions; and they 
become rarer each year as competition grows 
closer and more pressing. So far as law, at 
least, is concerned, one reason for the prevail- 
ing laxity may be found in the fact that this 
profession offers the easiest mode of entrance 
into politics; and to engage in that field of 
activity is often a chief aim in the minds of 
many young men who have no desire for a 
liberal education. But whatever public opinion 
may rest satisfied with, it seems indisputable 
that universities owe it to themselves to put 
their stamp upon no graduates in law, medicine, 
and technology who are not liberally educated 
men. 

When the technical and professional schools The unity of 
shall have been raised to true university rank, ^ v ^ty 
one series of problems will be solved; but 
others will remain. It is as necessary in Amer- 
ica, as Paulsen describes it to be in Germany, 
to conserve the unity of the university about 
the historic faculty of philosophy as a centre. 



278 THE AMERICAN COLLEGE AND 

This faculty is at once the essence of a uni- 
versity and its true glory. Standing alone it 
may justify the title university, as the history 
of the Johns Hopkins University for twenty 
years amply demonstrates. But to make it sub- 
ordinate or to keep it weak and unimportant, 
whether by subdivision or other means, is to 
sap the university's life-blood. The faculty of 
philosophy represents, when undivided, the 
unity of knowledge and the true catholicity of 
scholarly investigation. Through it each de- 
partment of study is kept in sympathy with 
its fellows, and each strengthens and supports 
the rest. When dissevered, its parts tend to 
become mere Fachschulen; and the highest 
ideals of university life are sacrificed. No 
stronger evidence in support of this opinion 
can be cited than the emphatic statements on 
the subject made by du Bois-Reymond, the 
physiologist, and by Hofmann, the chemist, 
in their inaugural addresses on assuming the 
rectorship of the University of Berlin in 1869 
and 1880, respectively. These are the words 
of du Bois-Reymond: "The philosophical fac- 
ulty forms the connecting-link between the 
remaining faculties. . . . The reciprocal ac- 
tion of the different branches of human knowl- 
edge which takes place within the philosophical 



THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 279 

faculty, would naturally be lost with its divi- 
sion, but this mutual influence contributes 
very much to widen the vision of the individ- 
ual, and to preserve in him a right judgment of 
his position in relation to the whole. The two 
divisions of the faculty would finally approach 
the character of special schools; the ideal 
stamp of the whole would be destroyed." 1 
And eleven years later Hofmann defended the 
same position with equal vigor. 

The faculty of philosophy, or of arts and 
sciences, must not only be preserved in its 
integrity, but its spirit must dominate the 
whole university. As has recently been offi- 
cially pointed out: 2 "The safety of the uni- 
versity spirit demands that the university 
proper [the faculty of philosophy] be counted 
as one part, and the collected schools [tech- 
nical and professional] together as another 
rather than that each professional and technical 
faculty shall claim a co-ordinate right with 
the foundation faculty, which would thus be 
made, not a half, but a seventh (or possibly 
one-twentieth, as the schools multiplied) of 
the university which but for it could have no 
real existence." This is still another lesson 

1 Ueber Universitats-Einrichtungen (Berlin, 1869), p. 15. 

2 See Report of the Secretary of the University of the State of New 
York for 1893, p. 176. 



28o 



THE AMERICAN COLLEGE 



Excessive 
specialization 
a danger 



that the administrators of American univer- 
sities have yet to learn. 

One other danger, common to all universities, 
whether German or American, lies in the ex- 
cessive specialization which is so often warmly 
recommended to university students. Its inev- 
itable result is loss of ability to see things in 
their proper proportions, as well as loss of 
sympathy with learning as a whole. Perhaps 
the division of labor cannot be carried too far 
for the value of the product, but certainly it 
can be carried too far for the good of the 
laborer. 



"Denn nur der grosse Gegenstand vermag 
Den tiefen Grund der Menschheit aufzuregen, 
Im engen Kreis verengert sich der Sinn." 



Signs are not wanting that this narrowing of 
view and of sympathy is already taking place; 
but the university has in the faculty of philos- 
ophy the means to correct it if it will. What 
science and practical life alike need is not 
narrow men, but broad men sharpened to a 
point. To train such is the highest function 
of the American university; and by its success 
in producing them must its efficiency be finally 
judged. 



XIV 

THE PLACE OF COMENIUS IN THE 
HISTORY OF EDUCATION 



An address before the Department of Superintendence of 
the National Educational Association, Brooklyn, 
New York, February 18, 1892 



THE PLACE OF COMENIUS IN THE 
HISTORY OF EDUCATION 

Travellers in distant lands describe rivers 
which are seemingly absorbed by the sandy 
desert. They disappear and leave little or no 
trace behind them. After a time, perhaps 
many miles away, the stream reappears. It 
gathers force and volume with going, and lends 
its fertilizing power to the surrounding coun- 
try. Even when hidden to view, it has not 
ceased to exist. Though the arid wastes have 
concealed its course, its effect has been felt 
beneath the surface; and here and there is a 
green oasis to mark its silent path. 

Human history is rich in analogies to this Comenius 
natural phenomenon, and in Comenius the 
history of education furnishes its example. 
In life he was persecuted for his religious con- 
victions and sought after for his educational 
ideas. In death, he was neglected and for- 
gotten by friends and foes alike. It could be 
said of him as the Emperor Julian said of the 
Epicureans, he was so completely stamped out 
that even his books were scarce. But the great 
283 



284 THE PLACE OF COMENIUS 

educational revival of our century, and partic- 
ularly of our generation, has shed the bright 
light of scholarly investigation into all the 
dark places, and to-day at the three hundredth 
anniversary of his birth the fine old Moravian 
bishop is being honored wherever teachers 
gather together and wherever education is 
the theme. We have found in Comenius the 
source and the forecasting of much that in- 
spires and directs our new education. 

It is difficult to project oneself back into 
a time when our present environment — social, 
political, material — was in its infancy and when 
modern invention had annihilated neither time 
nor space. It is still more difficult to give due 
credit to one who at such a time saw visions 
and dreamed dreams that we have since real- 
ized to the full. What is commonplace to- 
day, was genius three hundred years ago. 
America was one hundred years old when 
state of Comenius was born, but the wilderness of the 

Europe in ^ ew \y or id was un broken. Neither at James- 
town nor at Plymouth had a permanent settle- 
ment been established. The Spanish Armada 
had just been defeated, and the future of Great 
Britain made secure. Shakspere, Spenser, 
Jonson, and Hooker were making Elizabethan 
literature. Francis Bacon was growing in 



1592 



IN THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION 285 

power and reputation, but the climax of his 
career was yet to come. Copernicus had done 
his work; but Galileo, Kepler, and Harvey 
were still young men. Montaigne was dying, 
and Giordano Bruno was soon to be led to the 
stake. Luther had finished his fight, and the 
shock of the contest was felt in every corner 
of Europe. The universities were growing in 
numbers and influence; but Descartes and 
Newton, with the secrets of modern philosophy 
and modern science locked in their breasts, 
were yet unborn. It was an age of growth, 
of development, of rapid progress; but what 
we know as modern ideas and institutions only 
existed in their beginnings. The education of 
the people, true to its conservative traditions, 
was still shackled. Sturm, the typical school- 
master of partisan humanism, had endeavored 
to escape the unsatisfactory present by anchor- 
ing the school to the newly found past. 
Rabelais and Montaigne had scoffed and rid- 
iculed in vain. Something more systematic and 
constructive than mere literary criticism of the 
extravagances of humanism was necessary if 
education was to be in touch with the time. 
The impetus to this constructive work, and 
many far-reaching suggestions concerning it, 
were given by Comenius. 



286 



THE PLACE OF COMENIUS 



Educational 
aim of 
Comenius 



His teachers 



His own education was belated and deficient. 
Before it was concluded his reflective spirit 
was aroused, and Comenius conceived the idea 
of devoting his life to making the road to learn- 
ing easier to travel for those who were to come 
after him. This philanthropic enthusiasm was 
natural to him and was fostered by the religious 
atmosphere in which he was born and brought 
up. It grew with years and became the ruling 
passion of his life. At the close of his work 
he could say with deepest feeling: "I can affirm 
from the bottom of my heart that these forty 
years my aim has been simple and unpretend- 
ing, indifferent whether I teach or be taught, 
admonish or be admonished, willing to act 
the part of a teacher of teachers, if in any- 
thing it may be permitted me to do so, and 
a disciple of disciples where progress may be 
possible." 

The intellectual development of Comenius 
bears traces, both in its character and its di- 
rection, of the influence of five men. These 
are the Holstein educational reformer, Ratich 
or Ratke; the Irish Jesuit, Bateus; the Italian 
Dominican, Campanella; the Spaniard, Vives, 
the friend of Erasmus; the Englishman, Fran- 
cis Bacon. From Ratich he learned something 
of the way in which language-teaching, the 



IN THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION 287 

whole curriculum of the time, might be re- 
formed; and from Bateus he derived both the 
title and the plan of his Janua. Campanella 
suggested to him the necessity for the direct 
interrogation of nature if knowledge was to 
progress, and Vives emphasized for him from 
the same point of view the defects of contem- 
porary school practise. 

But it was Bacon's Instant alio Magna that 
opened his eyes to the possibilities of our knowl- 
edge of nature and its place in the educational 
scheme. The combined influence of Cam- 
panella, Vives, and Bacon caused him to throw 
off* the traditional scientific methods of scholas- 
tic Aristotelianism, and to cry out for the ob- 
servation and induction that have served later 
generations so richly. "Do we not dwell in 
the garden of Nature as well as the ancients ?" 
he exclaims. "Why should we not use our eyes, 
ears, and noses as well as they ? And why 
should we need other teachers than these our 
senses to learn to know the works of Nature ? 
Why, say I, should we not, instead of these 
dead books, lay open the living book of Nature, 
in which there is much more to contemplate 
than any one can ever relate, and the con- 
templation of which brings much more of 
pleasure, as well as of profit ?" These are the 



288 



THE PLACE OF COMENIUS 



Comenius 
an exile 



The 

Pansophia 



thoughts that underlie the text-books of Come- 
nius and gave them their value. 

The early part of the seventeenth century 
was not a period when an aggressive and en- 
thusiastic reformer like Comenius could work 
in peace anywhere in western Europe. On 
the Continent the Thirty Years' War was 
raging with all the bitterness and cruelty that 
a religious motive develops. In England the 
struggle between the Stuarts and the people 
was approaching its crisis, and the modern 
democratic spirit was crouching for a spring. 
Comenius was himself a follower of John Huss, 
who had paid for his principles with his life 
a century before. He himself and his beloved 
church suffered grievously during the turmoil 
and anarchy of the long struggle. When Ful- 
neck was taken by the Spaniards in 1621, 
Comenius lost all that was dear to him — his 
wife and children, his manuscripts and his 
library. Hence he was an exile, wandering 
over the face of the earth preaching the gospel 
of education. In Michelet's significant phrase, 
he lost his country and found the world. 

Under the influence of Bacon, Comenius had 
advanced a stage beyond the mere desire to 
reform educational method, and conceived a 
plan for a Pansophia, a vast encyclopaedia of 



IN THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION 289 

all the world's learning — Bacon's own globus 
intellectualis. His aim in this ambitious work 
was rather practical than speculative. To be 
sure, he wished to show that all departments 
of knowledge could be organized systematically 
in accordance with the new principles of method; 
but he was particularly anxious to husband the 
labors of scientific investigators all over the 
world by placing in their hands an account of 
all that was known, and so turn their attention 
and energy to new and unsolved problems. To 
obtain suggestions for this scheme and as- 
sistance in carrying it out, Comenius entered 
into an extensive correspondence with the 
leading men of science and patrons of learning 
in every country of Europe. 

He regarded his educational method as part Comenius 
of the Pansophia and an introduction to it. 
With feverish enthusiasm he pressed his proj- 
ects upon the attention of prominent men, and 
became widely celebrated for his zeal, his 
lofty motives, and his educational propaganda. 
He corresponded, among others, with that 
modern Maecenas, Samuel Hartlib, the friend 
of Milton. Together they planned for the es- 
tablishment of an academy or college to carry 
out the Pansophic idea and to be the cen- 
tre of the world's scientific advance in the 



290 



THE PLACE OF COMENIUS 



In Sweden 
and in 
Hungary 



future. In 1641 Comenius journeyed to Lon- 
don, where he found that Hartlib had made 
him known to Parliament, and was in high 
hopes of securing from the government an 
endowment for the work. Hartlib had paved 
the way so cleverly that Comenius would 
probably have succeeded in this but for the 
political disturbances which were overshadow- 
ing everything else and rapidly plunging Eng- 
land into civil war. The Long Parliament had 
little time to think of education. 

Baffled at this point, Comenius grasped at 
the next straw, which was an invitation to visit 
Sweden in the interest of his projects. This 
invitation came from de Geer, a wealthy Dutch- 
man resident in Sweden, who remained a stead- 
fast friend and patron while he lived. In 
Sweden Comenius was given a courteous and 
sympathetic hearing by Oxenstiern and the 
chancellor of the University of Upsala; but 
as practical men they advised him to sub- 
ordinate his Pansophia to the more pressing 
reforms of school instruction. He did this 
under protest and only after some friction, and 
a number of publications bearing on methods 
of teaching were the fruit of his labors for the 
next seven or eight years. Then in 1650 he 
transported himself to the recesses of Hungary, 



IN THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION 291 

in responses to a request of Prince Sigismund, 
and spent four years in writing and organizing 
schools there. Of the rest of his life the greater 
part was passed at Amsterdam, in compar- 
ative retirement, and he died there in 1671, 
at the advanced age of eighty. 

The Pansophia of Comenius need not be The dream 

7 • j j at71_ i_ °f Comenius 

seriously considered. Whatever may have 
been the arguments in its favor two hundred 
and fifty years ago, it has no significance now. 
The printing-press, the telegraph, the rapid 
and frequent communication between nations 
and peoples, have made it unnecessary and 
impossible. An important scientific discovery 
is known in Tokio, Sydney, and Valparaiso as 
soon as it is announced in New York or London. 
The dream of Bacon and Comenius was a note- 
worthy one, but it is largely owing to their 
own influence that its fulfilment in just the 
form they planned it was forever postponed. 
The world of learning has become its own 
Pansophia. 

The verdict of the literary historian on Comenius as 
Comenius, as voiced by Hallam, is that he modern^deas 
was a man of "much industry, some inge- 
nuity, and little judgment." The student of 
education, however, must take another and 
much broader view. In tracing contemporary 



292 THE PLACE OF COMENIUS 

movements and ideas back to their sources, 
he finds that a surprisingly large number of 
them were absorbed from the progressive ten- 
dencies of the time and formulated for the 
school by Comenius. The elementary school 
course must be shortened and enriched, we 
say; the pupil is consuming his life in prepar- 
ing for life, says Comenius. Rote-learning 
and mere memory-training are useless, we hear; 
my fundamental principle is that the under- 
standing and the tongue should advance in 
parallel lines always, says Comenius. Not 
enough time and care are devoted to the teach- 
ing of English, it is said; instruction in the 
mother tongue must lie at the basis of all 
else, says Comenius. The list might be con- 
tinued indefinitely. The infant school or kin- 
dergarten, female education, the incorporation 
of history and geography in the curriculum, 
the value of drawing and manual training, the 
fundamental importance of sense-training, the 
physical and the ethical elements in education, 
and finally that education is for all and not 
for a favored few only — were all articles in the 
creed of Comenius. Yet many of them are 
far from universally adopted to-day. Surely 
this man was a prophet ! 

The robust and practical character of the 



IN THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION 293 

proposals of Comenius is most apparent when Comenius 
they are contrasted with the educational doc- an oc e 
trines of those who have come after him, partic- 
ularly Locke, Rousseau, Pestalozzi, and Froe- 
bel. Frail as the psychology of Comenius was, 
it was truer than that of Locke. He knew that 
the human mind was an organism, an activity, 
a seed with wonderful potency of growth and 
development, and not a mere sheet of wax, as 
the Englishman taught, on whose passive sur- 
face the environment merely leaves certain im- 
pressions or traces. Locke's thought was of 
the education of the gentleman; Comenius 
proclaimed that education was for the race. 
The single point in which Locke corrected 
Comenius was in exalting character rather 
than knowledge as the chief aim in education. 

Of Rousseau one may say with Mr. Quick: Rousseau 
"His writings and the results produced by 
them are among the strangest things in his- 
tory; and especially in matters of education 
it is more than doubtful if the wise man of the 
world Montaigne, the Christian philanthropist 
Comenius, or that ' slave of truth and reason' 
Locke, had half as much influence as this de- 
praved serving-man." Rousseau's enthusiasm 
took the form of theory run mad, and the prac- 
tical impossibility of his educational plans was 



294 THE PLACE OF COMENIUS 

only exceeded by their philosophical unsound- 
ness. Comenius had been himself a teacher 
and an organizer of schools. He knew the 
practical limitations under which any theory 
is put when reduced to practise. He asked of 
the school and the pupil nothing that was im- 
possible. He accepted society as he found it 
and would teach it to reform itself. Rousseau, 
on the other hand, was in revolt against the 
whole social order. He would like to break all 
its bonds and make of every individual a self- 
worshipping god. 
Pestaiozzi There is nothing in the history of education 

so touching as the story of the life of Pestaiozzi. 
His own immortal words, "I lived like a beg- 
gar to teach beggars to live like men," only 
half reveal the story of his unwearied patience, 
his intense suffering, his self-sacrifices for child- 
hood. His life gave reality to his half-mystical 
principle that "the essential principle of edu- 
cation is not teaching; it is love." Yet his 
thought is relatively unimportant. Pestaiozzi 
gave himself to education, but few new prin- 
ciples. His theory of the value of intuition 
needs to be carefully supplemented, and his 
insistence on the fact that education is de- 
velopment, a drawing out and not a putting 
in, merely repeats the thought on which all of 



IN THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION 295 

the work of Comenius was based. Without 
that principle, which Comenius had made 
familiar more than a century before, the work 
of Pestalozzi would have been of little im- 
portance in the history of education. Indeed, 
it would have been philanthropy merely, not 
education. 

Nor does it detract from the estimate to Froebel 
be put upon Froebel's teachings to say that in 
almost every important particular they were 
built upon foundations laid by the Moravian 
bishop. Froebel himself was strangely deficient 
in masculinity and in practical capacity. His 
exaggerated and absurd symbolism and his 
unbalanced religiosity give a certain curious in- 
terest and stimulus to his doctrines, but add 
nothing to their force or their permanent value. 
His seed-thought is again that of Comenius — 
educate by developing the pupil's own activity. 
Out of it and its corollaries the new education 
has grown. 

The place of Comenius in the history of Comenius 

t • 1 r* r J' a> n d the 

education, therefore, is one of commanding modern 
importance. He introduces and dominates the movement 

, . . , r , . r ! in education 

whole modern movement in the held of ele- 
mentary and secondary education. His rela- 
tion to our present teaching is similar to that 
held by Copernicus and Newton toward mod- 



296 the place of comenius 

ern science, and Bacon and Descartes toward 
modern philosophy. Yet he was not, in a high 
sense, an original mind. But his spirit was 
essentially modern and remarkably receptive. 
He assimilated the ideas that were inspiring 
the new civilization and applied them to the 
school. In an age of general ignorance, Come- 
nius had an exaggerated idea of the importance 
of mere knowledge. This is easily understood 
and readily excused. Most of his educational 
tenets, preached with all the fervor of a Peter 
the Hermit and fought for with all the deter- 
mination of a Cceur de Lion, have become com- 
monplaces. But such is their value that we do 
well to pause to honor the memory of him who 
made them so. 



XV 



STATUS OF EDUCATION AT THE CLOSE 
OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 



An address before the Department of Superintendence of 
the National Educational Association at Chicago, 
Illinois, February 27, 1900 



STATUS OF EDUCATION AT THE CLOSE 
OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 

Imagination and feeling increasingly bear The centuries 
the brunt of shaping human opinion and hu- 
man conduct. Intelligence does its organizing 
work and then disappears below the surface. 
Much of life goes on without its active co- 
operation, just as many of our mental reac- 
tions, first organized in the brain, come to be 
carried on through the spinal cord alone. 
When we stop to think, we realize that a cen- 
tury is of human making, a purely arbitrary 
division of time. Century might have been 
the name given to a longer or a shorter period, 
twenty years or two hundred, without doing 
violence to anything save present associations. 
The limits of a century are wholly imaginary. 
The skies do not change when a century is 
ushered in, or the thunders roll when it passes 
out. A century begins and ends as noiselessly 
and as unperceived as any moment which 
glides from the future into the past. Imagina- 
tion, however, gives to the century an objective 
299 



300 EDUCATION AT THE CLOSE OF 

reality, and feeling welds our thoughts to it. 
The arbitrary period of time which it covers, 
and the events which happen in that period, 
come to have for us a relation of cause and 
effect or of reciprocal dependence. We cannot 
rid ourselves of that feeling. Fancy, if you 
can, Attila charging upon the Western Empire 
in a century called the fifteenth instead of the 
fifth, or Louis XVI losing his head in the 
eighth century instead of the eighteenth, or 
Columbus discovering America in the twen- 
tieth. 

We do well to resign ourselves to the spell 
of these mental creations, and to learn, as 
Macaulay somewhere said, to know our cen- 
turies. But who can know the nineteenth 
century ? Development so rapid, changes so 
startling, inventions so undreamed of, crowd 
each other in a whirl of confusing images 
when we try to picture this century and to 
note its salient facts. It is the century of 
Napoleon and of Lincoln, of Hegel and of 
Darwin, of Goethe and of Kipling, of Bessemer 
and of Rockefeller. More leaders of enter- 
prise and more captains of industry have ap- 
peared during this one hundred years than in 
all previous recorded history. The average of 
human intelligence and of human efficiency 



TEE NINETEENTH CENTURY 301 

has been raised to a point, in the United States 
certainly, which a few hundred years ago 
would have entailed notoriety, and perhaps 
distinction. Prosperity and querulousness, de- 
sire and happiness, have all multiplied together. 
How can all this be interpreted ? 

The wisest answer seems to me to be this: The 
The nineteenth century is pre-eminently the ^^ n 
period of individual liberty — political, religious, 
intellectual, industrial; and its manifold tri- 
umphs and achievements are due to the large 
opportunities which have been granted to in- 
dividual initiative and to individual expression. 
The greatness, the shortcomings, and the con- 
tradictions of the nineteenth century are alike 
due to this. 

It must be borne in mind that mankind 
discovered the significance of the individual 
rather late, and that, when discovered, this 
significance was variously interpreted. Man's 
early institutions and his law, based as they 
were on kinship, took the family, bound to- 
gether by tie of blood, as the unit. The in- 
dividual was of very secondary importance. 
The horde, the tribe, the state were successive 
aggregations of families, or, perhaps better, a 
larger family. The interest, the ambition, the 
vengeance of the group or community con- 



3Q2 EDUCATION AT THE CLOSE OF 



Development 
of the 
importance 
of the 
individual 



trolled each individual's acts and, in large 
measure, his opinions and his thoughts. Under 
such circumstances education could only be 
tribal or ethnic in its aims and in its forms. 
It sought to reproduce a type, not to develop 
a capacity. 

The journey during the history of civiliza- 
tion from this point of view to one from which 
the individual is himself of importance is a 
long and arduous one. Of representative an- 
cient thinkers the Sophists, the Cynics, and 
the Stoics alone championed the cause of the 
individual as such, and their appreciation of 
the real meaning of individualism was most 
imperfect. The Sophist hope that a man could 
spin a web of successful and useful existence 
out of the shadowy contents of his own per- 
ceptions, was dashed once and for all by Soc- 
rates. The Cynic revolt against social order 
and convention is typified by Diogenes with 
lantern and with tub. The Stoic outlook was 
a broader one, but it in turn was shut in by 
the massive height of an omnipresent, over- 
ruling law, before which man could only seek 
virtue through stern resignation. The clew 
suggested by the master-mind of Aristotle, by 
which the essential nature and the limitations 
of individualism might be made known, was 



THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 303 

not fully followed up for centuries. Yet from 
the fifth century before Christ onward philos- 
ophy was increasingly becoming not only the 
science of human conduct, but the art of hu- 
man living; and individualism was necessarily 
the gainer. How shall a man live to attain 
wisdom and virtue? was the question which the 
Greek and Roman moralists pressed home upon 
each individual listener with tremendous force. 
Then Christianity came, with its teaching of 
the equality of every human soul before the 
judgment-seat of God. Here, at last, indi- 
vidualism seemed to have found a secure foun- 
dation. The Sermon on the Mount was its 
charter and its moral guide. A man's salva- 
tion depended upon himself alone. Speedily, 
however, a reaction set in and the old habit 
of setting hard-and-fast limits for the individual 
asserted itself. Christianity grew rapidly into 
an elaborate system of doctrine to be held in 
its entirety semper, ubique, ab omnibus. On the 
other hand, the Roman jurists were elaborating 
a system of personal rights which was destined 
to afford individualism a new foothold and to 
exercise a profound influence upon European 
society. Superficially, then, individualism was 
checked by a body of doctrine, uniformly pre- 
scribed, which guided faith and practise; under 



304 EDUCATION AT THE CLOSE OF 

the surface, rights and opportunities for the 
individual continued to develop slowly. Edu- 
cation took on the form of the superficial ap- 
pearance of uniformity, and for centuries the 
western world continued steadily to uncoil 
itself in constantly widening circles, but still 
in circles. At length, the inner contradiction 
between the two great elements of mediaeval 
civilization asserted itself and the crash came. 
With the mocking jests of Rabelais, the caus- 
tic wit of Montaigne, the masculine fervor 
of Luther, pent-up individualism hurled itself 
against the bars which confined it. It broke 
through, now here and now there, and rushed 
headlessly hither and yon, searching for escape. 
It tried mysticism in religion as a relief from 
the clanking chains of dogma, and absolutism 
in politics as a protection from its nearest foes. 
Meanwhile, the crushing force of ancient tradi- 
tion asserted itself with dogged determination. 
But it was too late; the long-checked desire 
for a freedom which was too often interpreted 
as anarchy, and for a liberty which in its new- 
ness appeared to mean license, could not be 
controlled. In its name the persistent Anglo- 
Saxon challenged the house of Stuart, and 
after two centuries worked himself substan- 
tially free from the old forms of bondage. 



THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 305 

The more passionate and quick-moving Celt 
had to wait longer, but he acted more quickly. 
In the dramatic horrors and sublimities of the 
French Revolution he gained his immediate 
end at the risk of losing every precious pos- 
session of the race. 

The smoke of the French Revolution hung 
over Europe when the nineteenth century 
opened. As it gradually cleared away it be- 
came obvious that the successful struggle of 
individualism for recognition was almost over, 
but that the results were to be worked out by 
argument, not by anarchy. The century soon 
to close records what happened. 

Education, as a matter of course, has always Growth of 
borne the impress of the civilization whose ^individual 
product it was. From the fourteenth century in educational 
to the nineteenth the demand of individual- eory 
ism for representation in the schools has been 
heard, now earnest and reasonable, now pas- 
sionate and incoherent. Politics and religion 
so far overshadowed education in importance 
that it was a long time before there was any 
widespread recognition of the close relation 
in which education stood to them. On this 
matter the seventeenth and the eighteenth 
centuries brought great light, and there was 
new hope for the schools. False and partial 



306 EDUCATION AT THE CLOSE OF 

as we must hold much of the French and Eng- 
lish philosophy of the eighteenth century to be, 
it is nevertheless to be credited with having 
convinced the world that a fundamental prin- 
ciple bound together rational progress in poli- 
tics, in religion, and in education. To this 
conviction the nineteenth century has clung 
most tenaciously. The. result has been an un- 
exampled and dazzling expansion of educational 
endeavor and accomplishment. 

When the century opened Rousseau had been 
dead nearly twenty-three years. Pestalozzi 
had just left Stanz for Burgdorf, and at the 
age of fifty-five was crying ecstatically: "The 
child is right; he will not have anything come 
between nature and himself." Froebel, an 
introspective youth of nineteen, was at Jena, 
at that moment the very centre of the produc- 
tive activity of German thought. Reinhold 
had been expounding the new gospel according 
to Kant there, and Fichte had only recently 
been expelled while trying to interpret it. 
Then and there Froebel, as he himself said, 
began to know the names of Goethe and Schil- 
ler and Wieland. Hegel, too, was at Jena. 
His Lehrjahre were behind him, and at thirty 
years of age he was nearly ready to measure 
his strength with the masters. The lecture 



THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 307 

programmes of the University of Jena, as has 
been said, at that time fairly "dripped" philos- 
ophy. Herbart, who had been one of Fichte's 
pupils at Jena a few years earlier, was still, at 
twenty-four, studying and giving private in- 
struction. These five men — Rousseau, Pesta- 
lozzi, Froebel, Hegel, and Herbart — were to 
give to nineteenth-century education most of its 
philosophical foundation and not a few of its 
methods. From them have come the main in- 
fluences which have shaped education for a 
hundred years. 

Each one of the five plead in his way for the 
value of the individual. Rousseau, with no 
institutional sense and no insight into the 
meaning of history, exclaimed: "O man, con- 
centrate thine existence within thyself, and 
thou wilt no longer be miserable. Thy liberty, 
thy power, extend only as far as thy natural 
forces, and no farther. All the rest is but 
slavery, illusion, prestige." Pestalozzi, whose 
intellect never quite caught up with his emo- 
tions, was really neglecting the individual by 
his method of trying to care for him. Froebel 
and Hegel saw far deeper. They knew the 
meaning of institutions, of thought-relations, 
of development, both inner and outer. They 
taught the individual as a Gliedganzes, a whole 



308 EDUCATION AT THE CLOSE OF 

and yet a part of a larger whole, and so gave 
us our truest view of individualism in educa- 
tion. Herbart's individualism was hard and 
mechanical, though his doctrine of appercep- 
tion gave promise of something better and 
more vital. 

These men, then, projected individualism 
into contemporary educational theory. They 
had hosts of disciples in many lands, and the 
movement grew apace. It needed, however, 
the touch of practise to make it genuinely real. 
This came after 1848, the line which divides 
the century into two parts — the earlier part 
dominated by thought, with spirits like Goethe, 
Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Emerson as its 
exponents, the later dominated by action with 
Lincoln, Gladstone, and Bismarck as exemplars. 
In 1848 the individual gained the foothold 
which he had struggled for, but lost, in the 
haste of 1789. 

The new The pressure from practical life followed. 

freedom ^he °^ educational material and the tradi- 

tional educational methods were attacked with 
greater frequency and with greater vigor, as 
not adapted to modern needs. The ancient 
languages and the civilizations they embalmed 
were denounced as fetiches. The world's phi- 
losophy was nonsense; its art was archaic; 



THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 309 

its literature pedantic and overlaid with form. 
Straightway altars were erected to new and un- 
familiar gods; before all, to that product of the 
human understanding called science, which 
Mr. Herbert Spencer, with a humor quite un- 
conscious, defined as partially unified knowl- 
edge. The new spirit exulted in its freedom. 
It accomplished much; it ignored much. In a 
thousand ways it impressed itself on life, on 
literature, and on art. Education was shaken 
to its foundations. Nothing was sacred. No 
subject of study, no method of teaching was 
immune. Old institutions of learning were too 
slow to move and to adapt themselves to these 
conditions. New ones were invented, created, 
set in motion. Wealth, public and private, 
poured out like water to make possible and to 
sustain these new types of school. The seven 
liberal arts faded into insignificance beside the 
endless list of subjects now found to be worthy 
of study. 

This great, world-wide movement justified 
itself for the time by its results. Commerce, 
industry, and invention multiplied apace. The 
forces of nature were commanded through being 
obeyed. Education had become democratic, 
and was ready to offer training in preparation 
for any calling. The traditional list of learned 



310 EDUCATION AT THE CLOSE OF 

professions was increased by architecture, en- 
gineering, and a dozen more. Early and com- 
plete adaptation of the individual to his appro- 
priate career was hailed as the new educational 
ideal before which all else must give way. In 
consequence, the hasty conclusion was drawn 
that not only methods of procedure in edu- 
cation, but the sole principles upon which 
to proceed, could be learned by the study of 
the infant mind and the infant body. Upon 
this as a basis a superstructure of educational 
theory and practise was erected, which would 
have delighted the heart of that arch-Philistine, 
Rousseau. All that had been was wasteful, 
misleading, wrong, not on its merits, but sim- 
ply because it had been. The progress of the 
race in civilization was explained as having 
taken place in spite of men's ideals, not be- 
cause of them; and it was therefore rejected 
as a source of inspiration and of information. 
Individualism had not only won a great vic- 
tory, but apparently its opponents were an- 
nihilated. 
Excesses of This new philosophy, however, had not es- 

tablished itself without a protest, and as this 
type of individualism became more and more 
extreme in its claims, the protest grew louder 
and more earnest. Could the crowded cen- 



individualism 



THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 311 

turies of the human past teach us nothing ? 
Were the art of Phidias and of Raphael, the 
verse of Homer and of Dante, the philosophy 
of Plato and of Kant, the institutions of the 
Roman law and of constitutional government, 
all to depend for their educational meaning 
and value upon the carefully noted actions and 
preferences of the unformed infant in its cradle ? 
The humor of the situation revealed itself, and 
the reaction set in. 

Individualism had gone too far. In the The individual 
effort of forming; its fullest flower, it had torn f n( *. x x . 

° institutions 

itself up by the roots. History did mean some- of civilization 
thing after all; and environment was discov- 
ered to be a thing of three dimensions, not of 
two only. Reflection succeeded to controversy. 
Meanwhile the new sciences of nature had 
themselves been studying embryology and he- 
redity. These words took on new meanings. 
The individual was seen to be a product as well 
as a producer. Product of what ? Of all that 
man had thought and done, and of his own 
infinitesimal self. But if this were true, then 
what of education ? Obviously, the defenders 
of the new must shift their ground and retreat 
from the untenable position of Rousseau to 
the impregnable fortress, Gliedganzes, of Froe- 
bel, of Hegel, and of all philosophical teachers 



312 EDUCATION AT THE CLOSE OF 



Influence of 
the doctrine 
of evolution 



of evolution. This change has been made, 
and as the century closes the soundest educa- 
tional philosophy the world over teaches that 
the individual alone is nothing, but that the 
individual as a member of a society and of a 
race is everything. Selfhood, which can only 
be attained by entering into the life-history 
and the experience of the race, is now put in 
the high place which was about to be rashly 
filled by selfishness. True individualism, which 
would enrich the life of each with the posses- 
sions of all, is well-nigh supreme, and sham 
individualism, which would set every man's 
hand against his fellow, is disposed of, let us 
hope forever. Education rests securely upon 
the continuous history of man's civilization, 
and looks to the nature of each individual for 
guidance in the best methods of conducting 
him to his inheritance, but not for knowledge 
of what that inheritance is. 

Every conception of this nineteenth century, 
educational as well as other, has been cross- 
fertilized by the doctrine of evolution. In 
whichever direction we turn we meet that doc- 
trine or some one of its manifold implications. 
We have incorporated it into educational the- 
ory and have thereby shed a flood of light 
upon problems hitherto dark. Evolution has 



THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 313 

assisted mightily in that interpretation of in- 
dividualism which I have just defended. It 
has bound the universe together by homoge- 
neous law, and the relations of each to all, both 
physical and social, have become far clearer 
and more definite. But much remains to be 
done in applying the teachings of evolution 
in actual plans and methods of instruction. 
The application is going on, however, all around 
us and without cessation, and is the cause of 
not a little of the existing educational inquiry 
and unrest. Our schools have shed one shell 
and the other is not yet grown. Illustrations 
of this will be found in the teaching of mathe- 
matics, of language, of history, and of the nat- 
ural sciences. We halt often between the 
logical and the psychological order, failing to 
appreciate that evolution gives a place to each. 
The logical order is the order of proof, of demon- 
stration; the psychological order is the order The logical 
of discovery, of learning. Children do not learn an * h ® . . 

J ' ° psychological 

logically; they come later to see logical rela- order 
tions in what they have learned. The well- 
equipped teacher knows both logic and psy- 
chology. He is prepared to guide the pupil in 
his natural course of learning, and also to point 
out to him the structure of relationship of 
what he has learned. Text-book writers the 



314 EDUCATION AT THE CLOSE OF 



Evolution 

and 

individualism 



world over have been slow to see this distinc- 
tion; but with but few exceptions, the best 
American text-books, which control so power- 
fully all school processes, are in advance of 
those most in use in Europe. The logical order 
is so simple, so coherent, and so attractive, 
that it seems a pity to surrender it for the 
less trim and less precise order of develop- 
ment; but this will have to be done if teach- 
ing efficiency according to evolution is to be 
had. 

The course of evolution in the race and in 
the individual furnishes us also with the clew 
to the natural order and the real relationships 
of studies. It warns us against the artificial, 
the bizarre, and points us to the fundamental 
and the real. Only educational scholarship can 
protect the schools against educational dilet- 
tantism. 

Two lines are needed to determine the posi- 
tion of a point. The two principles of evolu- 
tion and of an individualism viewed in the 
light of the history of civilization, seem to me 
to determine the status of education at the 
close of the century. The working of these 
principles is exemplified in practise in a thou- 
sand ways. They lie behind and determine 
every effort for improvement and for progress. 



THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 315 

The diverse types of school, higher and lower, 
with their widely different special ends and 
yet with a common fund of basic knowledge 
which they all impart, reveal a purpose to 
cultivate and to adapt the special powers and 
talents of the individual, while holding him in 
touch with the life and the interests of his kind. 
The existence of the wonder-working elective 
system in secondary schools and colleges, to- 
gether with the limitations put upon it, is 
due to a real as opposed to a sham individual- 
ism. The marked emphasis now laid upon the 
social aspect of education, in Europe as well as 
in the United States, and also upon the school as 
a social institution and a social centre, is ad- 
ditional evidence of the dominance of the in- 
dividualism of Froebel rather than that of 
Rousseau. The demands for the establish- 
ment of a proper system of secondary educa- 
tion in England, for the making over of the 
secondary school systems of France and of 
Germany, for the closer articulation of lower 
schools and higher schools, of schools and col- 
leges, in the United States, for making ele- 
mentary school instruction as little wasteful 
and as full of content as possible, for bringing 
forward studies which give adequate scope for 
expression in various forms, and the demand 



316 EDUCATION AT THE CLOSE OF 



New 

importance 
of education 
as a 

government 
function 



that the community shall relate itself to its 
educational system simply and effectively — 
all these are based, consciously or uncon- 
sciously, upon the desire to apply the teachings 
of evolution and to progress toward the ideal 
of a perfected individualism. 

Education, so conceived and so shaped, has 
made an irresistible appeal to every civilized 
nation. During the century education has 
definitely become a state function, not as a 
dole but as a duty. Consequently, the public 
expenditure for education has become enor- 
mous. In the United States it amounts an- 
nually to $200,000,000 for the common schools 
alone, or $2.67 per capita of population. This 
sum is about one-tenth of the total wealth of 
Indiana or of Michigan as determined by the 
census of 1890. In Great Britain and Ireland 
the total public expenditure on account of 
education is over $88,000,000, or $2.20 per 
capita. In France it is about $58,000,000, or 
$1.60 per capita. In the German Empire it is 
over $108,000,000, or more than $2.00 per 
capita. These four great nations, therefore, 
the leaders of the world's civilization at this 
time, with a total population of nearly 210,- 
000,000, are spending annually for education 
a sum considerably greater than $450,000,000. 



THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 317 

The annual expenditure of the United States 
for common schools is quite equal to the sum 
total of the expenditures of Great Britain, 
France, and Germany combined upon their 
powerful navies. It is nearly four-fifths of the 
total annual expenditure of the armed camps of 
France and Germany upon their huge armies. 
It is a sum greater by many millions than the 
net ordinary expenditures of the United States 
Government in 1880. This expenditure for 
common schools has nearly trebled since 1870, 
and during that period has grown from $1.75 
to $2.67 per capita of population and from 
#15.20 to $18.86 for each pupil enrolled. 

These imposing and suggestive statistics 
mark, in the most objective fashion possible, 
the distance we have travelled from the be- 
ginning of the century, when there was literally 
no such thing in existence anywhere in the 
civilized world as a state system of education. 
But pride of achievement should yield to a 
feeling of responsibility for the future. In the 
light of the nineteenth century no man dare 
prophesy what the twentieth century will 
bring forth. We only know that a democracy 
shielded by insight into the past and armed 
with trained minds, disciplined wills, and a 
scientific method, is as read} as man's imperfect 



318 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 

wisdom can make it for whatever may come in 
the future. 

Daniel Webster, in his oration at the laying 
of the corner-stone of the Bunker Hill monu- 
ment, exulted honestly in the conviction that 
the example of our country was full of benefit 
to human freedom and to human happiness 
everywhere. "We can win no laurels in a 
war for independence,' , he said. "Earlier and 
worthier hands have gathered them all. Nor 
are there places for us by the side of Solon, 
and Alfred, and other founders of states. Our 
fathers have filled them. But there remains 
to us a great duty of defense and preservation; 
and there is opened to us, also, a noble pur- 
suit, to which the spirit of the times strongly 
invites us. Our proper business is improve- 
ment." This injunction laid upon Americans 
by their great orator three-quarters of a century 
ago, has lost none of its force. It applies with 
peculiar directness to teachers and to teaching. 
The glory of founding educational systems can- 
not be ours; but the effort for improvement, 
by building wise practise upon sound theory, 
is within the reach of each one of us. 



XVI 

SOME FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF 
AMERICAN EDUCATION 



An address before the Convocation of the University of 
the State of New York, at Albany, New York, June 
30, 1902 



SOME FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF 
AMERICAN EDUCATION 

It was my good fortune to hear one of Gen- 
eral Garfield's most eloquent speeches. From 
the gallery of a great hall I looked down upon 
a scene where ambition, envy, and patriotism 
were all struggling for expression in the na- 
tional convention of a powerful political party. 
A candidate for President of the United States 
was to be chosen. The walls had trembled at 
the mighty cheers that thousands of strong, 
eager men had given for the leaders of their 
choice. Finally, amid perfect silence, General 
Garfield rose in his place among the represen- 
tatives of Ohio and made his way to the plat- 
form to put before the convention the name of 
the man whom he preferred above all others 
for President of the United States. He had 
been greatly moved by the tempest of cheering 
and applause which had greeted two of the 
names already in nomination, and he sought 
to lead the convention away from the pas- 
sionate feeling of the moment to a more sober 
321 



322 SOME FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 

and substantial standard of judgment. With 
solemnity and deliberation, General Garfield 
opened his speech with these sentences: 

I have witnessed the extraordinary scenes of this con- 
vention with deep solicitude. Nothing touches my heart 
more quickly than a tribute of honor to a great and noble 
character; but as I sat in my seat and witnessed this 
demonstration, this assemblage seemed to me a human 
ocean in tempest. I have seen the sea lashed into fury 
and tossed into spray, and its grandeur moves the soul 
of the dullest man; but I remember that it is not the bil- 
lows, but the calm level of the sea, from which all heights 
and depths are measured. 

When the storm has passed and the hour of calm set- 
tles on the ocean, when the sunlight bathes its peaceful 
surface, then the astronomer and surveyor take the level 
from which they measure all terrestrial heights and 
depths. . . . 

Not here, in this brilliant circle where 15,000 men and 
women are gathered, is the destiny of the Republic to 
be decreed for the next four years. Not here, where I 
see the enthusiastic faces of 756 delegates, waiting to 
cast their lots into the urn and determine the choice of 
the Republic; but by four millions of Republican fire- 
sides, where the thoughtful voters, with wives and chil- 
dren about them, with the calm thoughts inspired by 
love of home and country, with the history of the past, 
the hopes of the future, and reverence for the great men 
who have adorned and blessed our nation in days gone by, 
burning in their hearts — there God prepares the verdict 
which will determine the wisdom of our work to-night. 



OF AMERICAN EDUCATION 323 

Often in listening to debates and discussions 
of matters far removed from things political, 
this counsel of Garfield's has recurred to me. 
It seems to be so easy, in education as else- 
where, to yield to the pressure of momentary 
feeling or temporary expediency and to lose 
sight of the deep underlying principles which 
should, and in the long run must, control our 
action and our policies, that we need constant 
reminder of what those principles are. There- 
fore, in accepting the invitation to address the 
Convocation of the University of the State of 
New York, I shall endeavor to place before 
you, though with necessary brevity, some prin- 
ciples which appear to me to be fundamental 
in our American educational system and policy. 
I am the more ready to do this because, during 
the last two or three years, in important de- 
bates, I have observed that some of these con- 
siderations have been overlooked or their ex- 
istence flatly denied. 

First and foremost, I name this proposition 
and hold it to be fundamental to our American 
educational system: 

While all forms of education may be under American 

1 1 education not 

government control, yet government control exc i US i ve i y a 
of education is not exclusive, and the national government 
system of education in the United States in- 



324 SOME FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 

eludes schools and institutions carried on with- 
out direct governmental oversight and support, 
as well as those that are maintained by public 
tax and administered by governmental agencies. 
Some very important consequences follow 
from the acceptance of this principle. A na- 
tion's life is much more than an inventory of its 
governmental activities. For example, the sum 
total of the educational activity of the United 
States is not to be ascertained by making an 
inventory of what the government — national, 
State, and local — is doing, but only by taking 
account of all that the people of the United 
States are doing, partly through governmental 
forms and processes and partly in non-govern- 
mental ways and by non-governmental sys- 
tems. In other words, the so-called public 
education of the United States, that which is 
tax-supported and under the direct control of 
a governmental agency, is not the entire na- 
tional educational system. To get at what the 
people of the United States are doing for edu- 
cation and to measure the full length and 
breadth of the nation's educational system, 
we must add to public or tax-supported educa- 
tion, all activities of similar kind that are carried 
on by private corporations, by voluntary as- 
sociations, and by individuals. The nation is 



OF AMERICAN EDUCATION 325 

represented partly by each of these under- 
takings, wholly by no one of them. The terms 
national and governmental are happily not 
convertible in the United States, whether it be 
of universities, of morals, or of efficiency that 
we are speaking. 

This point is of far-reaching importance, for Public 
it has become one of the political assumptions c ^ aract ® r 

r r of non-tax- 

of our time that any undertaking to be rep- supported 
resentative of the nation must be one which 
is under governmental control. Should this 
view ever command the deliberate assent of a 
majority of the American people, our institu- 
tions would undergo radical change and our 
liberties and right of initiative would be only 
such as the government of the moment might 
vouchsafe to us. But we are still clear-sighted 
enough to realize that our national ideals and 
our national spirit find expression in and 
through the churches, the newspaper press, the 
benefactions to letters, science, and art, the 
spontaneous uprisings in behalf of stricken 
humanity and oppressed peoples, and a hun- 
dred other similar forms, quite as truly as they 
find expression in and through legislative acts 
and appropriations, judicial opinions, and ad- 
ministrative orders. The latter are govern- 
mental in form and in effect; the former are 



326 SOME FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 

not. Both are national in the sense that both 
represent characteristics of the national life 
and character. 

The confusion between a nation's life and a 
nation's government is common enough, but 
so pernicious that I may be permitted a few 
words concerning it. 
Government When Hegel asserted that morality is the 
and liberty ultimate end for which the state — that is, 
politically organized mankind — exists, he stated 
one of the profoundest moral and political 
truths. But it is pointed out to us by political 
science that before any such ultimate end can 
be gained, the proximate end of the develop- 
ment of national states must be aimed at. The 
state operates to develop the principle of na- 
tionality which exists among persons knit to- 
gether by common origin, common speech, and 
common habitat, through creating and per- 
fecting two things — government and liberty. 
The first step out of barbarism is the establish- 
ment of a government strong enough to pre- 
serve peace and order at home and to resist 
successfully attack from without. This ac- 
complished, the state must turn to the setting 
up of a system of individual liberty. It does 
this by marking out the limits within which 
individual initiative and autonomy are per- 



OF AMERICAN EDUCATION 327 

mitted, and by directing the government to 
refrain from crossing these limits itself and to 
prevent any one else from crossing them. After 
government and liberty have both been estab- 
lished, then all subsequent history is the story 
of a continually changing line of demarcation 
between them, according as circumstances 
suggest or dictate. In the United States, for 
example, the post-office is in the domain of 
government; the express business and the 
sending of telegrams are in the domain of 
liberty. In different countries, and in the 
same country at different times, the line be- 
tween the sphere of government and the sphere 
of liberty is differently drawn. In Germany 
the conduct of railways is largely an affair of 
government; in the United States it is largely 
an affair of liberty. Schools, for example, are 
to-day much more an affair of government 
than ever before, but they are still an affair 
which falls in the domain of liberty as well. 
In short, government plus liberty, each being 
the name for a field of activity, gives the com- 
plete life of the state; government alone does 
so just as little as the sphere of liberty alone 
would do so. These principles are all set forth 
with great lucidity and skill by my colleague, 
Professor Burgess, in his work entitled Political 



328 SOME FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 

Science and Comparative Constitutional Law. In 
discussing this distinction he writes: 

It is often said that the state does nothing for certain 
causes, as, for instance, religion or the higher education, 
when the government does not exercise its powers in their 
behalf. This does not at all follow. If the state guar- 
antees the liberty of conscience and of thought and ex- 
pression, and permits the association of individuals for 
the purposes of religion and education, and protects such 
associations in the exercise of their rights, it does a vast 
deal for religion and education; vastly more, under cer- 
tain social conditions, than if it should authorize the gov- 
ernment to interfere in these domains. The confusion of 
thought upon this subject arises from the erroneous as- 
sumptions that the state does nothing except what it does 
through the government; that the state is not the creator 
of liberty; that liberty is natural right, and that the state 
only imposes a certain necessary restraint upon the same. 
. . . There never was, and there never can be, any liberty 
on this earth and among human beings outside of state 
organization. . . . Mankind does not begin with liberty. 
Mankind acquires liberty through civilization. Liberty 
is as truly a creation of the state as is government. 1 

A written constitution, it may be added, is 
a formal act of creation of a government and a 
careful delimitation of its powers. It also de- 
fines the sphere of individual liberty, directly 
or indirectly, and so the individual is protected 
by the state against the government. Through 

1 Op. cit. (Boston, 1890), I : 87-89. 



OF AMERICAN EDUCATION 329 

the government he is also protected against 
encroachment from elsewhere. In the Con- 
stitution of the United States, for example, the 
individual is guaranteed by the state the rights 
peaceably to assemble and to petition the 
government for a redress of grievances, and 
the government must both refrain from in- 
vading those rights and prevent others from 
invading them. If the government should fail 
to do this, the state which created the govern- 
ment would surely remodel or destroy it. 

I shall not apologize for this excursion into 
the domain of political science, inasmuch as I 
hold the distinction between state and govern- 
ment to be of crucial importance for right 
thinking upon the larger problems of our edu- 
cational polity. When once the distinction 
between state and government is grasped, and 
also the further distinction between the sphere 
of government and the sphere of liberty, then 
it is seen to be a matter of expediency, to be 
determined by a study of the facts and by 
argument, whether a given matter — such as 
support of schools or the control of railways 
and telegraphs — should be assigned to the 
sphere of government or to the sphere of 
liberty. 

In the United States there are three differ- 



330 SOME FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 



The three 
types of 
American 
educational 
institution 



National 

institutions 

not 

necessarily 

governmental 



ent types of educational institution, all resting 
upon the power of the State. One of the three 
depends wholly and one partly upon the govern- 
ment. The third type is without any govern- 
mental relationship whatever. The three types 
are these: 

1. Those institutions which the government 
establishes and maintains, such as the public 
schools, the public libraries, and the State 
universities. 

2. Those institutions which the government 
authorizes, such as school, college, and uni- 
versity corporations, private or semipublic in 
character, which gain their powers and privi- 
leges by a charter granted by the proper govern- 
mental authority, and which are often given 
aid by the government in the form of partial 
or entire exemption from taxation. 

3. Those institutions which the State per- 
mits, because it has conferred on the govern- 
ment no power to forbid or to restrict them, 
such as private-venture (unincorporated) edu- 
cational undertakings of various kinds. 

Our American educational system is made up 
of all these, and whether a given school, col- 
lege, or university is national or not does not 
in the least depend upon the fact that it is or 
is not governmental. France and Germany 



OF AMERICAN EDUCATION 331 

have great national universities which are gov- 
ernmental; England and the United States 
have great national universities which are non- 
governmental. Oxford and Cambridge are no 
less truly English, and Harvard and Columbia 
are no less truly American, because their funds 
are not derived from public tax and because 
the appointments to their professorships are 
not made or confirmed by government officers. 
Whether a given institution is truly national 
or not depends, in the United States, upon 
whether it is democratic in spirit, catholic in 
temper, and without political, theological, or 
local limitations and trammels. It may be 
religious in tone and in purpose and yet be 
national, provided only that its doors be not 
closed to any qualified student because of his 
creed. 

It is worth noting that while in the United 
States the government bears nearly the entire 
brunt of elementary education, it finds a pow- 
erful ally in non-governmental institutions in 
the field of secondary and higher education. 
The statistics gathered by the commissioner of 
education show that for the year ending June 
30, 1900, of all elementary school pupils 92.27 
per cent were enrolled in governmental in- 
stitutions, while for secondary and higher edu- 



332 SOME FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 

cation the percentages were 73.75 and 38.17 
respectively. In other words, non-govern- 
mental institutions — those which are loosely 
described as private schools and colleges — are 
instructing about 1-13 of the pupils of ele- 
mentary grade, about 1-4 of the pupils of sec- 
ondary grade, and about 2-3 of the pupils of 
higher grade. Almost exactly 1-10 of the whole 
number of pupils of all grades are enrolled in 
non-governmental, so-called private, institu- 
tions. It is just this word "private" which 
increases the confusion against which my argu- 
ment is directed. It is my contention that 
none of these institutions is properly described 
as "private"; they are all public, but not all 
governmental. If this point is clear, then we 
shall have escaped the fallacies and dangers 
that follow from confusing tax-supported, gov- 
ernmental undertakings with public tendencies 
and movements. In education and in our po- 
litical life generally, the public tendencies and 
movements are a genus of which governmental 
activities are a species. 

As a second fundamental principle of our 

American educational system, I name this: 

Scope of The duly constituted authorities of any 

education^ 6 * 1 scno °^ district or other political unit may 

establish and maintain schools of any kind or 



OF AMERICAN EDUCATION 333 

grade for which the voters consent in regular 
form to bear the expense. 

There is a wide-spread belief that elemen- 
tary education under government control is a 
matter of right, but that secondary and higher 
education under government control are im- 
proper invasions of the domain of liberty. 
There is no ground in our public policy for this 
belief. The government has the same right to 
do for secondary and for higher education that 
it has to do for elementary education. What 
and how much it shall do, if anything, in a 
particular case, is a question of expediency; 
the right to do as much as it chooses is un- 
questionable. 

Upon this point there is an important de- 
cision, 1 made by unanimous vote of the Supreme 
Court of Michigan in 1874, which may fairly 
be taken to represent our established policy. 
The opinion was written by Justice Thomas 
M. Cooley, one of the most learned and au- 
thoritative of American constitutional lawyers. 
The decision was rendered in a suit known as 
"the Kalamazoo case," to restrain the col- 
lection of such portion of the school taxes as- 
sessed against the complainants for the year 

1 Michigan Reports (1875), 30:69-85. (Stuart v. School 
District No. 1 of Kalamazoo.) 



334 SOME FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 

1872 as was voted for the support of the high 
school and for the payment of the salary of the 
superintendent of schools in school district 
No. 1 of Kalamazoo. The position of the com- 
plainants, as stated by the court, was as 
follows : 

While there may be no constitutional provision expressly 
prohibiting such taxation, the general course of legislation 
in the State and the general understanding of the people 
have been such as to require instruction in the classics 
and in living modern languages in the public schools to 
be regarded as in the nature , not of practical and therefore 
necessary instruction for the benefit of the people at large, 
but rather as accomplishments for the few, to be sought 
after in the main by those best able to pay for them, and 
to be paid for by those who seek them, and not by general 
tax. And further, that the higher learning, when sup- 
plied by the State, is so far a matter of private concern 
to those who receive it that the courts ought to declare 
the State incompetent to supply it wholly at the public 
expense. 

In answer to this contention the court ex- 
presses surprise that the legislation and policy 
of the State were appealed to against the right 
of the State to furnish a liberal education to 
the youth of the State in schools brought with- 
in the reach of all classes. 

We supposed [adds the court] it had always been under- 
stood in this State that education, not merely in the rudi- 



OF AMERICAN EDUCATION 335 

ments, but in an enlarged sense, was regarded as an im- 
portant practical advantage to be supplied at their option 
to rich and poor alike, and not as something pertaining 
merely to culture and accomplishment, to be brought as 
such within the reach of those whose accumulated wealth 
enabled them to pay for it. 

The court then passes in review, in most 
instructive fashion, the development of the 
educational policy of the State from the be- 
ginning, and concludes, as follows: 

We content ourselves with the statement that neither 
in our State policy, in our constitution, nor in our laws, 
do we find the primary-school districts restricted in the 
branches of knowledge which their officers may cause to 
be taught, or the grade of instruction that may be given, 
if their voters consent in regular form to bear the expense 
and raise the taxes for the purpose. 

In consonance with this opinion is one de- 
livered by the Supreme Court of Missouri in 
1883, 1 in which it is held that the term "com- 
mon," when applied to schools, is used to de- 
note the fact that they are open and public to 
all rather than to indicate the grade of the 
school, or what may or may not be taught 
therein. The court also holds that the term 
"school" of itself does not imply a restriction 
to the rudiments of an education. 

1 See Missouri Reports (1882-3), 77 : 4 8 5~4 8 9« 



336 SOME FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 

It is interesting to contrast these decisions 
in Michigan and in Missouri with the con- 
clusion reached by the Court of Queen's Bench 
in England in 1901 in the now famous case of 
the Queen versus Cockerton, 1 in which it is 
expressly held that it is not within the power 
of a school board to expend money raised by 
local taxes upon any education other than 
elementary. The terms of the Education Act 
of 1870 and of the many acts supplementary 
thereto no doubt justified the court's decision, 
but the fact that such a conclusion is bad 
public policy has been brought to the atten- 
tion of a large number of thoughtful persons, 
and has had no small part in the present educa- 
tional debate which is much the most impor- 
tant matter before Parliament and the English 
people. 

A third fundamental principle of our Ameri- 
can education is this: 
Tax-supported The schools which are maintained by govern- 
mental authority are established in the interest 
of the whole people, and because of the con- 
trolling conviction that an instructed and en- 
lightened population is essential to the per- 
petuity of democratic institutions and to their 
effective operation. The schools are therefore 

1 See Law Reports, King's Bench (1901), I : 322-360, 726-740. 



education as 
public service 



OF AMERICAN EDUCATION 337 

a proper charge upon all taxpaying persons and 
property, and not merely upon those whose 
children receive instruction therein. Nor are 
they in any sense schools which are provided 
for the poor or the unfortunate. 

When stated, this principle seems axiomatic. 
Nevertheless, it is openly or impliedly denied 
with surprising frequency. It is safe to say 
that in all of our large cities there is a class of 
persons, by no means inconsiderable in number, 
who look upon the tax-supported schools as 
they look upon almshouses and asylums. Such 
persons regard the schools as a part of the 
community's charitable or philanthropic equip- 
ment. In my view, on the other hand, the 
schools are a part of the community's life. 
They are not merely to give relief or shelter 
to individuals, they are to minister to the 
democratic ideal. The very children who sit 
on the benches are regarded not merely as 
children, interesting, lovable, precious, but as 
future citizens of a democracy with all the 
privileges and responsibilities which that im- 
plies. Over seventy years ago Daniel Webster 
stated this principle in language which cannot 
be improved: 

" For the purpose of public instruction," said Webster, 
in his oration at Plymouth on Forefathers' Day in 1820, 



338 SOME FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 



Daniel 
Webster on 
taxation for 
public 
instruction 



"we hold every man subject to taxation in proportion to 
his property, and we look not to the question whether he 
himself have or have not children to be benefited by the 
education for which he pays. We regard it as a wise and 
liberal system of police, by which property, and life, and 
the peace of society are secured. We seek to prevent in 
some measure the extension of the penal code by inspiring 
a salutary and conservative principle of virtue and of 
knowledge in an early age. We strive to excite a feeling 
of respectability, and a sense of character, by enlarging 
the capacity and increasing the sphere of intellectual en- 
joyment. By general instruction, we seek, as far as pos- 
sible, to purify the whole moral atmosphere; to keep good 
sentiments uppermost, and to turn the strong current of 
feeling and opinion, as well as the censures of the law and 
the denunciations of religion, against immorality and 
crime. We hope for a security beyond the law, and above 
the law, in the prevalence of an enlightened and well- 
principled moral sentiment. . . . And knowing that our 
government rests directly upon the public will, in order 
that we may preserve it we endeavor to give a safe and 
proper direction to that public will. We do not, indeed, 
expect all men to be philosophers or statesmen; but we 
confidently trust, and our expectation of the duration of 
our system of government rests upon that trust, that, by 
the diffusion of general knowledge, and good and virtuous 
sentiments, the political fabric may be secure as well 
against open violence and overthrow as against the slow, 
but sure, undermining of licentiousness." 



Here we have in the words of our greatest 
expounder of the underlying principles of Amer- 



OF AMERICAN EDUCATION 339 

ican polity a statement of the philosophical 
basis upon which our tax-supported school 
system rests. We may wish that these schools 
did many things differently; we may not have 
children to send to their class rooms; never- 
theless, they are our schools because we are 
American citizens, and we owe them our loyal 
service as well as our ungrudging support. 
Any one who wishes, for personal, social, or 
religious reasons, to have his child receive a 
training other than that which the tax-sup- 
ported schools give, is at liberty to make such 
provision for his child as he chooses; but he 
is not thereby released from the obligation 
resting upon him as a citizen to contribute to 
the support of the tax-supported schools. It 
follows, too, that the parents of those who are 
pupils in the tax-supported schools have no 
peculiar rights in connection with the policy of 
those schools that are not shared by all other 
citizens. The schools are for the people as a 
whole, not for those of a district or ward, or 
of a political party or religious communion, 
or for those who are either poor or rich. We 
poison our democracy at its source if we per- 
mit any qualification of this fundamental prin- 
ciple. 

It is sometimes gravely argued that posi- 



34o SOME FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 

tions as school officers or teachers should be 
given only to those who live, at the moment, 
in the civil community or subdivision in which 
the school in question is situated. This is the 
theory that the schools exist not for the people 
or for the children, but in order that places 
may be provided for the friends, relatives, and 
neighbors of those who are charged for the 
time being with the power of appointment. 
It is an undemocratic theory, because it sub- 
stitutes a privileged class for open competition 
among the best qualified. Pushed to its logical 
extreme, it would look first in the ranks of the 
descendants of the aborigines for persons to 
appoint to posts in the educational system. 
Very few Americans live where their grand- 
parents lived, and it is usually those who have 
come most recently to a city, town, or village 
who are loudest in insisting that no "outsider," 
as the saying is, be given a place as teacher 
or superintendent. The democratic theory, on 
the contrary, asks only for the best, and if the 
community cannot provide the best it holds 
that such community should enrich itself by 
bringing in the best from wherever it is to be 
had. As teaching becomes a profession, the 
teacher and school officer will acquire a pro- 
fessional reputation and status which will 



OF AMERICAN EDUCATION 341 

make short work of town, county, and even 
State boundaries. 

These three principles have been chosen for Three 

1 1 i_- 1 fundamental 

presentation and emphasis at this time be- principles of 
cause, although each of them is often denied, American 
I believe them to underlie our whole educa- 
tional system, and to condition all clear think- 
ing and right action concerning it. They are, 
briefly, that: 

1. American education is far wider than the 
system of tax-supported schools and universi- 
ties, numerous and excellent as those schools 
and universities are. All schools, colleges, and 
universities, tax-supported or not, are public 
in the important sense that they all reflect and 
represent some part or phase of our national 
life and character. 

2. There is no restriction upon the amount, 
kind, or variety of education which a district, 
town, or city may furnish, save that which is 
found in the willingness or unwillingness of 
citizens to vote the necessary taxes. 

3. The tax-supported schools are public 
schools in the fullest possible sense, and are not 
maintained for the benefit of persons of any 
special class or condition, or from any motive 



342 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

which may properly be described as charitable 
or philanthropic. 

The constant application of these principles 
in educational debates and discussions would 
bring definiteness and clearness into many 
places that are now dark and uncertain, and 
would greatly promote the interest which we 
all have at heart — the conservation and up- 
building of our American democracy. 



XVII 

EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES 



An Introduction to a series of monographs contributed 
by the State of New York to the United States Edu- 
cational Exhibit at the Paris Exposition of 1900 



EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES 

Spontaneity is the keynote of education in 
the United States. Its varied form, its uneven 
progress, its lack of symmetry, its practical 
effectiveness, are all due to the fact that it has 
sprung, unbidden and unforced, from the needs 
and aspirations of the people. Local prefer- 
ence and individual initiative have been ruling 
forces. What men have wished for that they 
have done. They have not waited for State 
assistance or for State control. As a result, 
there is, in the European sense, no American 
system of education. There is no national 
educational administrative machinery and no 
national legislative authority over education 
in the several States. The bureau of education 
at Washington was not established until 1867, 
and save in one or two minor respects, its func- 
tions are wholly advisory. It is absolutely 
dependent upon the good-will of the educa- 
tional officials of the States, counties, and 
municipalities and upon that of the adminis- 
trative officers of privately conducted institu- 

345 



Government 
and education 



346 EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES 

tions, for the admirable and authoritative 
statistics which it collects and publishes year 
by year. That these statistics are so complete 
and so accurate is evidence that the moral 
influence and authority of the bureau of edu- 
cation are very great, and that it commands 
a co-operation as cordial as it is universal. 
National But the National Government has, from the 

very beginning, made enormous grants of land 
and money in aid of education in the several 
States. The portion of the public domain 
hitherto set apart by Congress for the endow- 
ment of public education amounts to 86,138,- 
473 acres, or 134,591 English square miles. 
This is an area larger than that of the six New 
England States, New York, New Jersey, Mary- 
land, and Delaware added together. It is a 
portion of the earth's surface as great as the 
kingdom of Prussia, about seven-tenths as 
great as France, and considerably greater than 
the combined areas of Great Britain, including 
the Channel Islands, and the kingdom of Hol- 
land. The aggregate value of lands and money 
given for education by the National Govern- 
ment, as Commissioner Harris shows in de- 
tail, 1 is nearly $300,000,000. 

1 Education in the United States (new edition, New York, 19 10), 
1:96. 



EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES 347 

The uniform tendency of recent develop- Education a 
ment, as marked by judicial decisions and by state function 
legislative enactments, is to treat all publicly 
controlled education as part of a slowly form- 
ing system which has its basis in the authority 
of the State government, as distinguished from 
that of the nation on the one hand and from 
that of the locality on the other. This system 
may be highly centralized, as in New York, 
or the contrary, as in Massachusetts, but the 
theory underlying it is the same. The two 
fundamental principles which are emerging as 
the result of a century's growth are, first, that 
education is a matter of State concern, and 
not merely one of local preference; and, second, 
that State inspection and supervision shall 
be applied so as to stimulate and encourage 
local interest in education and to avoid the 
deadening routine of a mechanical uniformity. 
The State acts to provide adequate oppor- 
tunity for elementary education for all chil- 
dren, and abundant opportunity for secondary 
and higher education. But the State claims 
no monopoly in education. It protects private 
initiative, whether stimulated by religious zeal, 
philanthropy, or desire for gain, in doing the 
same thing. It is not customary, in the United 
States, for State officials to inspect or to inter- 



348 EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES 

fere with the educational work of privately 
established institutions. When these are char- 
tered bodies, they are subject simply to the 
general provisions of law governing corpora- 
tions of their class. When they are not char- 
tered bodies, the State treats them as it does 
any private business undertaking: it lets them 
alone. Standards of efficiency and of profes- 
sional attainment are regulated in these in- 
stitutions by those in neighboring public 
institutions, by local public opinion, and by 
competition. Sometimes these forces operate 
to raise standards, sometimes to lower them. 
New York has gone further than any other 
State in attempting to define and to classify 
all educational institutions, private as well 
as public. Pennsylvania has recently entered 
upon a similar policy; and it is being urged in 
other States as well. The public elementary 
schools are more or less carefully regulated by 
law, both as to length of school term, as to 
subjects taught, and as to the necessary quali- 
fications of the teachers. The public secondary 
schools, familiarly known as high schools, and 
the State universities are usually without any 
such regulation. 

The term "common schools" is often used 
in the United States of the public elementary 



EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES 349 

schools alone; but the more correct use is to statistics of 
include under it all public elementary schools, pubUc 

r J 7 education 

the first eight years of the course of study, 
and all public secondary schools, maintaining a 
four years' course, as a rule, in advance of the 
elementary school. In 1897-8 the total esti- 
mated population of the United States was 
72,737,100. Of this number 21,458,294 — a 
number nearly equal to the population of Aus- 
tria — were of school age, as it is called; that 
is, they were from 5 to 18 years of age. This 
is not the age covered by the compulsory edu- 
cation laws, but the school age as the term is 
used by the United States census. By school 
age is meant the period during which a pupil 
may attend a public school and during which 
a share of the public money may be used for 
his education. It is obvious, then, that per- 
sons who have satisfactorily completed both an 
elementary and a secondary course of study 
may still be returned as of "school age" and 
as "not attending any school." This fact 
has always to be taken into account in the 
interpretation of American educational sta- 
tistics. 

In 1897-8 the number of pupils entered upon 
the registers of the common schools — that is, 
the public elementary and the public secondary 



35o EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES 

schools — was 15,038,636, or 20.68 per cent of 
the total population and 70.08 per cent of the 
persons of "school age." The total popula- 
tion of Scotland and Ireland is only about half 
so many as this. For these pupils 409,193 
teachers were employed, of which number 
131,750, or 32.2 per cent were men. The wo- 
men teachers in the common schools num- 
bered 277,443. The teachers, if brought to- 
gether, would outnumber the population of 
Munich. The women alone far more than equal 
the population of Bordeaux. No fewer than 
242,390 buildings were in use for common-school 
purposes. Their aggregate value was nearly 
#500,000,000 (#492,703,781). 

The average length of the annual school 
session was 143. 1 days, an increase since 1870 
of 11 days. In some States the length of the 
annual school session is very much above this 
average. It rises, for example, to 191 days in 
Rhode Island, 186 in Massachusetts, 185 in 
New Jersey, 176 in New York, 172 in Cali- 
fornia, 162 in Iowa, and 160 in Michigan and 
Wisconsin. The shortest average annual ses- 
sion is in North Carolina (68.8 days) and in 
Arkansas (69 days). Taking the entire edu- 
cational resources of the United States into 
consideration, each individual of the popula- 



EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES 351 

tion would receive school instruction for 5 
years of 200 days each. Since 1870 this has 
increased from 3.36 years, and since 1880 from 
3.96 years, of 200 days each. 

The average monthly salary of men teachers 
in the common schools was $45.16 in 1897-8; 
that of the women teachers was $38.74. In 
the last forty years the average salary of com- 
mon-school teachers has increased 86.3 per cent 
in cities and 74.9 per cent in the rural districts. 
The total receipts for common-school purposes 
in 1897-8 were almost $200,000,000 ($199,- 
317,597), of which vast sum 4.6 per cent was 
income from permanent funds, 17.9 per cent 
was raised by State-school tax, 67.3 per cent 
by local (county, municipal, or school district) 
tax, and 10.2 came from other sources. The 
common-school expenditure per capita of popu- 
lation was $2.67; for each pupil, it averaged 
$18.86. Teachers' salaries absorb 63.8 percent 
($123,809,412) of the expenditure for common 
schools. 

The commissioner of education believes the 
normal standard of enrolment in private edu- 
cational institutions to be about 15 per cent 
of the total enrolment. At the present time 
it is only a little more than 9 per cent, having 
been reduced apparently by the long period of 



352 EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES 

commercial and financial depression which has 
but lately ended, 
illiteracy Illiteracy in the United States can hardly be 

compared fairly with that in European coun- 
tries because of the fact that an overwhelming 
proportion of the illiterates are found among 
the negroes and among the immigrants who 
continue to pour into the country in large 
numbers. The eleventh census of the United 
States, taken in 1890, showed that the per- 
centage of illiterates to the whole population 
was 13.3, a decrease of 3.7 per cent since the 
census of 1880. But the percentage of illiterates 
among the native white population (being 73.2 
per cent of the whole) was only 6.2 of those ten 
years of age or older. Among the foreign-born 
white population (14.6 per cent of the whole) 
the percentage of illiteracy was 13.1, and 
among the colored population (12.2 of the 
whole) it was 56.8. That is, nearly one-half 
of the whole number of illiterates in the United 
States were colored. Only in Florida, Mis- 
sissippi, West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky, 
Georgia, Arkansas, Tennessee, South Carolina, 
Alabama, Louisiana, North Carolina, and New 
Mexico was the percentage of illiteracy among 
the native white population greater than 10. 
This percentage fell below 2 in New Hampshire 



EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES 353 

(1.5), Massachusetts (0.8), Connecticut (1), 
New York (1.8), District of Columbia (1.7), 
Minnesota (1.4), Iowa (1.8), North Dakota 
(1.8), South Dakota (1.2), Nebraska (1.3), 
Montana (1.6), Wyoming (1.3), Nevada (0.8), 
Idaho (1.9), Washington (1.3), Oregon (1.8), and 
California (1.7). In Kansas it was exactly 2. 

It is not infrequently charged by those who Education 
have but a superficial knowledge of the facts, an cnme 
or who are disposed to weaken the force of 
the argument for State education, that one 
effect of the system of public education in the 
United States has been to increase the pro- 
portion of criminals, particularly those whose 
crime is against property. The facts in refuta- 
tion of this charge are so simple and so indis- 
putable that they should always be kept in 
mind. 

In the first place, it must be remembered 
that communities which maintain schools have 
higher standards as to what is lawful than 
communities which are without the civiliza- 
tion which the presence of a school system 
indicates, and that, therefore, more acts are 
held to be criminal and more crimes are de- 
tected and punished in a community of the 
former sort than in one of the latter. A greater 
number of arrests may signify better police 



354 EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES 

administration rather than an increase in 
crime. 

Again, where records have been carefully 
kept, it appears that the illiterate portion of 
the population furnishes from six to eight 
times its proper proportion of criminals. This 
was established for a large area by an exten- 
sive investigation carried on by the bureau of 
education in 1870. 

The history of the past fifty years in the 
State of Massachusetts is alone a conclusive 
answer to the contention that education begets 
crime. In 1850 the jails and prisons of that 
State held 8,761 persons, while in 1855 the 
number had increased to three times as many 
(26,651). On the surface, therefore, crime had 
greatly increased. But analysis of the crimes 
shows that serious offenses had fallen off 40 
per cent during this period, while the vigilance 
with which minor misdemeanors were followed 
up had produced the great apparent increase 
in crime. While drunkenness had greatly 
fallen off in proportion to the population, yet 
commitments for drunkenness alone multiplied 
from 3,341 in 1850 to 18,701 in 1885. The com- 
mitments for crimes other than drunkenness 
were 1 to every 183 of the population in 1850, 
and 1 to every 244 of the population in 1885. 



EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES 355 

In other words, as has been pointed out, persons 
and property had become safer, while drunken- 
ness had become more dangerous — to the 
drunkard. 

The American people are convinced that 
their public school system has justified the 
argument of Daniel Webster, made in 1820: 
"For the purpose of public instruction/' he 
said, "we hold every man subject to taxation 
in proportion to his property, and we look not 
to the question whether he himself have or 
have not children to be benefited by the educa- 
tion for which he pays; we regard it as a wise 
and liberal system of police, by which property, 
and life, and the peace of society are secured. 
We seek to prevent, in some measure, the ex- 
tension of the penal code by inspiring a salutary 
and conservative principle of virtue and of 
knowledge in an early age. We hope to excite 
a feeling of respectability and a sense of char- 
acter by enlarging the capacities and increasing 

the sphere of intellectual enjoyment 

Knowing that our government rests directly 
upon the public will, that we may preserve it 
we endeavor to give a safe and proper direc- 
tion to the public will. We do not, indeed, 
expect all men to be philosophers or states- 
men; but we confidently trust .... that by 



356 EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES 

the diffusion of general knowledge, and good 
and virtuous sentiments, the political fabric 
may be secure as well against open violence 
and overthrow as against the slow but sure 
undermining of licentiousness." 
Education Where the public-school term in the United 

and industry g tates [ s longest, there the average productive 
capacity of the citizen is greatest. This can 
hardly be a coincidence. When the man of 
science finds such a coincidence as this in his 
test-tube or balance, he proclaims it a scientific 
discovery proved by inductive evidence. The 
average school period per inhabitant, taking 
the United States as a whole, was, in 1897, 
4.3 years. The average school period for Mas- 
sachusetts is 7 years. The proportion, there- 
fore, between the school period in that State 
and the school period in the whole United 
States is as 70 to 43. It is very interesting to 
note that the proportion between the produc- 
tive capacity of each individual in Mas- 
sachusetts and that of each individual in 
the whole United States is as 66 to 37. Edu- 
cation, 70 to 43; productivity, 66 to 37. On 
the basis of 306 working-days in Massachusetts, 
and on the basis of a population something 
over 2,000,000, this means that every citizen 
of Massachusetts — man, woman, infant in 



EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES 357 

arms — is to be credited with a productive 
capacity every year of #88.75 more than the 
average for the United States as a whole. Or 
to put it in the most striking fashion, it means 
that the excess of productive capacity for the 
State of Massachusetts in one year is #200,- 
000,000, or about 20 times the cost of main- 
taining the public schools. If the State of 
North Carolina, for example, could bring it 
about through education that every individual's 
productive capacity was increased 10 cents a 
day — that is, just one-third the Massachusetts 
excess — for 306 working-days, estimating the 
population roughly at 1,750,000, the State 
would be better off in the next calendar year 
to the amount of #54,000,000. If the increase 
could equal the Massachusetts excess of 29 
cents, North Carolina would be better off to 
the extent of #160,000,000. North Carolina 
now spends less than #1,000,000 a year for 
public education. 

The number of public secondary schools, Public 
high schools, in the United States in 1897-8 se A cond ^ 

o > - 7/ education 

was 5,315, employing 17,941 teachers and en- 
rolling 449,600 pupils. Nearly 3,000 of these 
schools (2,832) were in the North Central 
States. The rapid increase of these schools, the 
flexibility of their programme of studies, and 



SSS EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES 

the growing value of the training which they 
offer are among the most significant educational 
facts of the last two decades. The present 
rate of increase of secondary school pupils is 
nearly five times as great as the rate of in- 
crease of the population. It is noteworthy, 
too, that nearly 50 per cent (49.44) of the 
whole number of secondary school pupils are 
studying Latin. The rate of increase in the 
number of the pupils who study Latin is fully 
twice as great as the rate of increase in the 
number of secondary school students. 

Between 1890 and 1896, while the number 
of students in private secondary schools in- 
creased 12 per cent, the number of students 
in public secondary schools increased 87 per 
cent. Further, since 1893-4 tne number of pu- 
pils in private secondary schools has steadily 
declined. 

Local The number of colleges in the United States 

— 472, excluding those for women only — is 
very large. Many of these institutions, small 
and weak, ill-equipped and ill-endowed, are fre- 
quently criticised severely for endeavoring to 
continue the struggle for existence. This criti- 
cism is, in part, justifiable, but it ought not to 
be forgotten that almost every college exerts a 
helpful influence upon the life of its locality. 



influence of 
the college 



EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES 359 

The fact is frequently overlooked that all 
American colleges depend for their students in 
large measure upon their own neighborhood. 
Few draw from the nation at large, and these 
few draw only a small proportion of their stu- 
dents from beyond the confines of their own 
State or the limits of their own section of the 
country. For example, of the 28,000 (27,956) 
students attending colleges in the North Atlan- 
tic division, 26,393, or 94.41 per cent, are resi- 
dents of the States included in that division. 
Of the 8,529 students in colleges of Massa- 
chusetts, 55.62 per cent are residents of that 
State, and 83.37 P er cent are residents of the 
North Atlantic division, of which Massa- 
chusetts is a part. In Oregon the percentages 
rise to 96.09 and 99.87, respectively. 

The development of universities in the American 
United States has taken place during the universities 
present generation. The name "university" 
is, in America, no proper index to the charac- 
ter and work of the institution which bears 
it. Professor Perry has set out illustrations of 
this fact with great clearness. 1 Nevertheless, 
the distinctions between secondary school, col- 
lege, and university are more widely recognized 
each year, and it is not too much to hope that, 

1 Education in the United States (New York, 1910), I : 254. 



360 EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES 

in course of time, the various institutions will 
adopt the names which properly belong to each. 
The definition of a university which I have 
suggested elsewhere 1 is this: "An institution 
where students, adequately trained by previous 
study of the liberal arts and sciences, are led 
into special fields of learning and research by 
teachers of high excellence and originality; 
and where, by the agency of museums, labora- 
tories, and publications, knowledge is con- 
served, advanced, and disseminated." In this 
sense there are at least half a dozen American 
universities now in existence, and as many 
more in the process of making. These univer- 
sities are markedly different from those of 
France, Germany, and Great Britain, but they 
respond in a most complete way to the educa- 
tional needs of the American people, and they 
are playing an increasingly important part in 
the advancement of knowledge and the devel- 
opment of its applications to problems of gov- 
ernment, of industry, and of commerce. The 
administrators of American universities have 
studied carefully the experience of European 
nations, and they have applied the result of 
that experience, wherever possible, in the so- 
lution of their own problems. 

1 See p. 265. 



EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES 361 

The variety and value of American contri- Literature of 
butions to the literature of education are educatlon 
worthy of notice. Nearly 300 periodical pub- 
lications of one type or another are devoted 
mainly to education. A few of these rank with 
the leading educational journals of the world. 
Perhaps the publications of the National 
Educational Association, a voluntary organiza- 
tion of teachers of every grade, are the most 
characteristic American contributions. They 
include not only the invaluable series of annual 
Proceedings, containing papers and discussions 
by the leaders of American education for a 
generation, but reports upon particular sub- 
jects the investigation of which has been un- 
dertaken from time to time by special com- 
mittees. Among the subjects so reported upon 
are these: Secondary school duties, organiza- 
tion of elementary education, rural schools, 
college-entrance requirements, relation of pub- 
lic libraries to public schools, and normal 
schools. 

The most valuable official publications are 
these: the annual reports, issued since 1868, 
by the United States commissioner of educa- 
tion, those since 1889 being particularly note- 
worthy; the reports issued by Horace Mann 
as secretary of the State board of education 



education 



362 EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES 

of Massachusetts, 1838-49; the twelve volumes 
of reports issued by William T. Harris, as 
superintendent of the public schools of St. 
Louis, Missouri, 1867-79; an ^ tne annual re- 
ports of Charles W. Eliot as president of Har- 
vard University, 1871-99. The annual reports 
of State and city superintendents of schools are 
a storehouse of information and often contain 
elaborate discussions of educational theory and 
practise. 

Private aid to One fact in American education is certainly 
unique. That is the vast sum given in aid or 
endowment of education by individuals. It 
recalls the best traditions of the princes and 
churchmen of the Middle Ages, but is on a 
vastly larger scale. For some time past the 
income of Harvard University from this source 
has been nearly or quite a million dollars an- 
nually. In 1898-9 the total amount of gifts 
to Harvard University for purposes of general 
or special endowment was $1,383,460.77, and 
for immediate use $161,368.90. Columbia 
University has received in the last decade 
$6,736,482 in money and in land. An unoffi- 
cial estimate of the amount given by indi- 
viduals during the year 1899 for universities, 
colleges, schools, and libraries is over $70,000,- 
000. The tendency which these colossal figures 



EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES 363 

indicate is one of the most fortunate and most 
hopeful in American life. The makers and 
holders of great fortunes are pouring out from 
their excess for the development of the higher 
life and greater productive capacity of the 
people. The religious bodies, in particular the 
Roman Catholic Church, are doing the same 
thing upon a very large scale. The convic- 
tion that education is fundamental to demo- 
cratic civilization is perhaps the most wide- 
spread among the American people. Public 
funds and private wealth are alike given un- 
stintingly in support of it. 

Education, conceived as a social institution, study of 
is now being studied in the United States more e ucatlon 
widely and more energetically than ever be- 
fore. The chairs of education in the great 
universities are the natural leaders in this 
movement. It is carried on also in normal 
schools, in teachers' training classes, and in 
countless voluntary associations and clubs in 
every part of the country. Problems of or- 
ganization and administration, of educational 
theory, of practical procedure in teaching, of 
child nature, of hygiene and sanitation are 
engaging attention everywhere. Herein lies 
the promise of great advances in the future. 
Enthusiasm, earnestness, and scientific method 



364 EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES 

are all applied to the study of education in a 
way which makes it certain that the results 
will be fruitful. The future of democracy is 
bound up with the future of education. 



XVIII 

DISCIPLINE AND THE SOCIAL AIM OF 
EDUCATION 



A paper read before the American Academy of Arts and 
Letters at Boston, Massachusetts, November 19, 1915 



DISCIPLINE AND THE SOCIAL AIM OF 
EDUCATION 

All training implies an end or purpose. The Training 
systematic development of knowledge and ca- impUes 

/ r ° < purpose 

pacity, and the systematic formation of habits 
of thought and of action, would have no signifi- 
cance or value unless they aimed to accomplish 
some definite result. Moralists and political 
philosophers have toiled for ages to formu- 
late and to define an end or object of training 
and discipline, and the result is some of the 
most illuminating and inspiring of the world's 
literature. 

A moment's reflection will make it plain that Form of 
the purpose of training; and of discipline will ^ a J mn s 

r r ° r • determined 

depend upon the philosophy of life which con- by one's 
trols our thinking and our action. If one's \ t ^^ y 
philosophy of life, so called, is to have no phi- 
losophy, but only to try to deal with each situ- 
ation as it arises and to make the best of it, 
then the end and purpose of training will be 
simply that one may drift aimlessly about on 
a sea which he has no instruments to measure, 
and be borne by currents which he has no 
367 



3 68 



DISCIPLINE AND THE 



The common 
school a 
product of 
democracy 



power to divert or to withstand. It is appar- 
ent, too, that under the influence of a system 
of caste, or of a uniform religious belief, or of 
an all-controlling national aim or purpose, dis- 
cipline and training will be given a precise and 
definite form. The younger generation will be 
taught either to feel the force of the caste dis- 
tinctions and to enter into a caste with all that 
implies, or to accept the formulas and the rit- 
ual of a religion to which it gives inherited ad- 
herence, or to subject itself to the legally 
organized powers and organs of the state and 
to do their will uncomplainingly and as effec- 
tively as possible. 

For the great modern democracies, no one of 
these ends or aims of discipline is possible, since 
these democracies rest upon the principles of 
equality before the law and of opportunity open 
freely to talent of every kind. The purpose 
and function of discipline in a democracy are 
necessarily quite different from those that ap- 
prove themselves in an absolute monarchy or 
in a nation which accepts the principles that 
the state is different from, and superior to, the 
individuals that compose it, and that it is not 
subject to the moral and legal limitations which 
bind the individual. Membership in such a 
state is not citizenship but subordination. Such 



SOCIAL AIM OF EDUCATION 369 

a state may attain, for a time at least, a high 
degree of social and political effectiveness, but 
this effectiveness will be gained at the cost of 
civil liberty; and the price is far too high to 
pay. The educational system of a nation which 
accepts a form of political philosophy such as 
this will naturally aim at two things. It will 
aim to train the few for effective leadership and 
it will aim to train the many for effective sub- 
ordination. It will fix a substantial barrier be- 
tween those schools and institutions which train 
for leadership and those schools and institutions 
which train for subordination. This subordina- 
tion may be political, or it may be social, or it 
may be economic, or it may be military, but 
if it exists there can be no such thing as com- 
mon schools in the nation. The conception of 
common schools and the very name itself are 
the product of the social philosophy of democ- 
racy. The common school is not and cannot 
be a class school. It is a school for the chil- 
dren of the whole people in which they are to 
be given that instruction and that discipline 
which lay the foundations not for leadership in 
a state and not for subordination in a state, 
but for citizenship of a state; and these are 
the same for all. 

The ethical and the social aims of education 



37° 



DISCIPLINE AND THE 



Discipline 

and 

democracy 



are accomplished in part by example, in part 
by precept, and in still larger part by practise. 
The inculcation of virtue by precept is far less 
effective than the inculcation of virtue by ex- 
ample, and the inculcation of virtue by example 
requires for its completion the habitual prac- 
tise of that virtue by the pupil. This explains 
why, in the elementary and secondary schools, 
so little attention is paid to formal instruction 
in morals and in duties, and why so much em- 
phasis is properly laid upon the personality of 
the teacher and upon the actual behavior and 
habits of the pupils. 

The problem of discipline in the educational 
system of a democracy is the world-old prob- 
lem of reconciling liberty with order, progress 
with permanence, and government with justice. 
Not until mankind is itself perfect will this 
problem be finally and completely solved. The 
pressing question that now arises to perplex 
the democracies of the world is how to secure 
increased national effectiveness without the sac- 
rifice of liberty, how to move forward toward 
the attainment of a national purpose without 
calling upon the agents and organs of despot- 
ism to take command. In other words, the 
question is how to reconcile the civil liberty of 
the individual with an increasing degree of 



SOCIAL AIM OF EDUCATION 371 

national organization for national needs and 
with a steadily increasing sense of individual 
responsibility for a collective purpose or policy. 
This is the precise topic which most concerns the 
philosophers of to-day who would throw light 
upon the difficult problems of the moment as 
these arise in education, in ethics, and in politics. 

It is of the essence of democracy that every 
individual shall be called upon to do the best 
that is in him and to do this in such manner as 
not to limit the similar right and the equal 
opportunity of every other individual to do 
the same. Therefore, each individual's share 
in collective action or in the accomplishment 
of a collective purpose must be something 
which he imposes upon himself, and not some- 
thing which is imposed upon him by force from 
without or by the authority of other wills than 
his own. The abnormal or atypical individ- 
ual must, of course, be dealt with in abnormal 
and atypical ways, but the normal human 
being must be called upon to become respon- 
sible for himself and to render service to the 
community as his own free act and not in re- 
sponse to the compulsion of another. 

There can be no dispute as to the fact that The 
society is composed of individuals, but there ^majority 
appears to be wide difference of opinion as to 



372 DISCIPLINE AND THE 

the relation in which society should stand to 
the individuals who compose it. There are 
those who, confident of the wisdom of their own 
opinions and judgment, impatient of the slow 
sagacity of nature, and dissatisfied with the 
imperfect results of education, would extend 
the rule of compulsion over the conduct and 
habits of men from the necessary to the merely 
expedient, and from the highly important to 
the trivial and insignificant. It is just now a 
common observation that whenever a majority, 
however fickle or however fortuitous, can be 
obtained in support of a given restriction upon 
others which commends itself to their own judg- 
ment or their own feelings, they will promptly 
impose that restriction upon all men within 
reach of their authority, quite regardless of its 
ultimate moral and social effects. This is the 
disposition which, for many centuries, has been 
responsible at one time or another for sump- 
tuary legislation of various kinds, and for the 
annoying and foolish restrictions which have 
from time to time been imposed upon men 
without any permanent result other than to 
make clear the unwisdom of the principles and 
policies which guide such action. This is the 
danger that is always present in those move- 
ments which, to those who are enthusiastic in 



SOCIAL AIM OF EDUCATION 373 

their support, and frequently high-minded, ap- 
pear to make for moral and economic progress 
and prosperity, but which in reality have an 
opposite effect because they extend the area of 
compulsion over conduct. 

Sound discipline has a higher social aim than Individualism, 
this and it proceeds by a quite different method. £ nd ec vism 
It takes its start from the capacity and the edu- institutionai- 
cability of the individual. Upon this it makes 
the most rigorous and insistent demands. It 
aims to develop personality, self, to the utmost, 
but it aims to develop it as selfhood and not as 
selfishness. The gap between selfhood and self- 
ishness is as wide as the gap between a sound 
and an unsound individualism. Unsound in- 
dividualism errs on its side as completely as 
does collectivism on the other side. The one 
means an eventual anarchy where right is de- 
termined by the rule of might; the other means 
a stagnation where right is determined by tra- 
dition and by custom. Between the two, shar- 
ing the advantages of individualism and of col- 
lectivism alike and avoiding the evils of both, 
lies that form of political and moral philosophy 
which, for lack of a better term, may be called 
institutionalism. This philosophy teaches that 
the individual finds his completion and his sat- 
isfaction in willing membership in the social 



374 DISCIPLINE AND THE 

whole with all the obligations that such mem- 
bership brings as to human service and as to 
collective responsibility. 

Institutionalism finds in the family, in the 
church, in the state, in private property, in sci- 
ence, in literature, and in the fine arts those in- 
stitutions and undertakings which represent the 
striving of human personality toward the goal 
of self-expression and attainment. No one of 
these institutions or undertakings is static or 
fixed, but each one of them reveals in history a 
process of development which appears to be 
toward greater perfection and the increasing 
satisfaction of man. Where, as in the case of 
the church, of literature, and of the fine arts, 
there seem to be exceptions to this rule, inas- 
much as an astounding standard of perfection 
was reached in the early stages of western civ- 
ilization, there is much food for reflection. It 
may, perhaps, be true that some of the more 
subtle and imaginative forms of human expres- 
sion and achievement are as well able to ap- 
proximate perfection in their earliest manifes- 
tations as after a long course of development. 
Discipline and ^ * s m these institutions and undertakings 
personality tnat man finds that larger education which life 
superimposes upon the discipline and training 
of the school. It is through participation in 



SOCIAL AIM OF EDUCATION 375 

these institutions and undertakings and, in the 
case of exceptional men, through contribution 
to our knowledge of them or through further- 
ing their development, that personality finds 
its highest expression and its fullest satisfac- 
tion. A person is, as Kant long ago pointed 
out, not a means to an end; a human person 
is an end in himself. The enriching of one's 
own personality is the real basis for human ser- 
vice and for bearing a share of collective respon- 
sibility. The objective goods that may follow 
from human service and from collective action 
are, of course, highly important, but the sub- 
jective results in the minds and characters of 
the individuals who participate in them are 
more important still. 

Autocracy and an all-powerful non-moral 
state have demonstrated that they can obtain 
and manifest a marked degree of national effi- 
ciency. It remains for democracy to prove 
that it can do the same, or it will eventually 
succumb before a more effective type of na- 
tional organization in which true civil liberty 
is unknown. 

The difficulties of democracy are the oppor- Democracy 
tunities of education. 1 It is for the educational 



and 
efficiency 



1 See Butler, True and False Democracy (New York, 1907), 
p. 100. 



376 DISCIPLINE AND THE 

system of a really free people so to train and 
discipline its children that their contribution to 
national organization and national effectiveness 
will be voluntary and generous, not prescribed 
and forced. 

The service and the sacrifice which are the 
results of a self-imposed limitation are worth 
many times the service and the sacrifice that 
follow prescription and compulsion. The mo- 
ment that we substitute for an autonomous 
will, a will that is self-directed, an heterono- 
mous will, a will that is directed by others, we 
have treated the human being not as a person, 
but as a thing; we have substituted mechanism 
for life. 

The early training and discipline of the child 
are for the purpose of teaching his will to form 
itself, to direct itself, to walk alone. Fortu- 
nately, the child is not asked to begin his life 
at the point where the race began, but he is 
offered through the family, the church, and the 
school the benefits of the age-long experience 
of the race and of its inherited culture and 
efficiency. These are offered him not as rods 
for chastisement or formulas for repression, but 
rather as food upon which to grow and as a 
ladder upon which to climb. If the process of 
training and discipline has been wisely ordered, 



SOCIAL AIM OF EDUCATION 377 

the child will come to the end of his formal 
training not only with keen appreciation of 
what has been done for him, but with eager 
anticipation of the opportunity that lies open 
before him. It is the merest sciolism to sup- 
pose that each child can or should construct the 
world anew for himself. His own reactions, his 
own experiences, his own appreciations, his 
own reflections are only important as part of a 
process, and that process is his growing into an 
understanding of what the world has been and 
is, in order that through participation in it he 
may strive to alter it for the better. 

The ideal society and the ideal state is not Education and 
one ruled by a despot, by a military caste, or state 
by a controlling oligarchy, however beneficent 
these may be, or however efficiently organized 
the masses whom they order and control. The 
ideal society and the ideal state is a democracy 
in which every man and every woman is fitted 
to be free, to put forth the best possible effort 
in self-expression through participation in the 
great human institutions and undertakings 
that constitute civilization, and in service to 
others like-minded with themselves. This is 
the social aim of a soundly conceived education. 
To its accomplishment, all training, all disci- 
pline, all vocational preparation, all scholar- 



378 SOCIAL AIM OF EDUCATION 

ship are intended to lead. If they do not ac- 
complish this, they are futile. "For what shall 
it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, 
and lose his own soul ?" 






INDEX 



INDEX 



Adams, C. K., 243 
Addison, 107 
Adolescence, 209, 214 
JEsop's Fables, 140 
American college, 90, 266 
Amiel, 47 
Anaxagoras, 67 
Apperception, 83 
Applied science, schools of, 275 
Aquinas, 47, 5° 
Aristotle, 49, 74, 76, 3°2 
Arnold, Matthew, 59, 193, 229 
Atomic view of society, 35 
Augustine, St., 56 
Azarias, Brother, 58 

Bacon, 56, 115, 284, 286, 291, 296 
Baer, von, 49 
Bateus, 286 
Beethoven, 57, 67 
Belief, religious, 191 
Bentham, 74 

Berlin School Conference, 203 
Berlin University, 261, 263, 278 
Bert, Paul, 189 
Bessemer, 300 

Bible, instruction in, 37; influence 
on Lincoln's style, 140; in 
schools, 185; a sectarian book? 
186; ignorance of, 199 

Bismarck, 64, 129, 222, 308 

Bonnet, 69 

Bopp, 54 

Boswell, 99 

Boyle, 67 

Breal, Michel, 244 

Brinton, D. G., 192 

Browning, Robert, 69 

Bruno, 49, 285 

Buckle, 66 

Bunyan, 140 

Bureau of Education, 230 

Burger stein, 78 

Burgess, John W., 327 



Cambridge University, 261, 331 

Campanella, 286 

Carlyle, 67 

Cayley, 52 

Champollion, 53 

Character and the moral order, 

68 
Chicago University, 270 
Christianity, 303 

Church, and state, 36; an edu- 
cational agency, 190 
Cicero, 240, 250 
Civic instruction, 192 
Civilization, 25, 181; Egyptian, 

53; institutions of, 311 
Colding, 66 
Coleridge, 308 
Collectivism, 373 

College, Entrance examinations, 
232; distinguished from uni- 
versity, 261; population, 267; 
local influence of, 358 
Columbia University, 270, 273, 

33i, 362 
Columbus, 300 
Comenius, 100, 281 
Committee of Ten, 203, 215 
Comte, 51 
Condillac, 69 

Conduct, standards of, 136 
Constitution of the U. S., 328 
Constructive work, instruction in, 

253 
Cooley, T. M., 333 
Copernicus, 285, 295 
Course of study, broadening of, 91 
Crime and education, 353 
Criticism, educational, 165 
Culture, meaning of, 39, 40 
Cynics, 302 

Dante, 45, 54, 57, i55» 3H 
Darwin, 67, 74, 2 57, 3°o 
Davidson, Thomas, 192 



38i 



382 



INDEX 



Democracy, 4, 64, 183-189, 224, 
342, 364, 368; and efficiency, 
375 

Demosthenes, 250 

Descartes, 23, 50, 52, 285, 296 

Differences between children, 159 

Diogenes, 302 

Discipline, and self-discipline, 126; 
in the kindergarten, 175; of sec- 
ondary instruction, 214; and 
democracy, 370; and personal- 
ity, 374 

Drawing, study of, 253 

Du Bellay, Jacques, 103 

Du Bois-Reymond, 67, 278 

Earle, John, 106 

Economics, study of, 94 

Education, as a science, 6, 75, 363; 
and philosophy, 7, 55; nomen- 
clature, 7; and infancy, 18, 38; 
length of time required for, 21; 
purpose of, 41; two aspects of, 
63; as spiritual growth, 69; 
three avenues of scientific ap- 
proach to, 75 ; how to plan, 
151,154; as a government func- 
tion, 316; American, three fun- 
damental principles, 341; a 
State function, 347; endow- 
ment in the U. S., 346; and 
national government, 346; and 
crime, 353; and evolution, 22, 
73; and industry, 356; private 
aid to, 362 

Efficiency, 113, 221, 375 

Elective system, 159, 218, 315 

Elementary education, definition 
of, 207, 230 

Elementary instruction, in ad- 
vance in applied psychology, 79; 
too early for vocational training, 
122; passage from, to second- 
ary, 212 

Eliot, Charles W., 234; reports, 
362 

Emerson, 68, 308 

Energy, 5, 50, 53 

English language, 104-107; study 
of, 241 

Environment, 22, 141, 180, 181 

Epicureans, 283 

Erasmus, 59, 60, 99, 286 

Europe in 1592, 284 

Evolution, 5, 14, 49; and educa- 
tion, 22, 73; influence of the 



doctrine of, 312; and individ- 
ualism, 314 
Eye training, 121 

Family, development of, 19; an 
educational agency, 190 

Feuerbach, 191 

Fichte, 49, 306 

Fiske, John, 5, 14, 19, 21, 45 

France, University of, 263 

Freedom, new spirit of, 308 

French language, study of, 252 

French Revolution, 305 

Freshman class, 84 

Froebel, 61, 166, 167, 173, 293, 
295, 306, 307, 311, 315 

Froude, 63 

Fulda, 229 

Fulneck, 288 

Galileo, 46, 285 

Galle, 51 

Garfield, 321 

Gauss, 52 

Geer de, 290 

Geography, study of, 244 

German language, study of, 104, 
252 

German universities, 261 

Gibbon, 128 

Gladstone, 74, in, 308 

Goethe, 40, 54, 252, 300, 306, 308 

Gottingen University, 261 

Government, education a function 
of, 316; control of American ed- 
ucation, 323; and liberty, 326; 
and the state, 328; national, 
and education, 346 

Greek, study of, 92, 248; culture, 
40 

Grimm, 54; laws, 94 

Gymnasium, 231, 238, 250, 265, 
270 

Hall, G. Stanley, 79, 273 

Hallam, 291 

Hamilton, Sir Wm., 57, 246 

Hand and eye training, 121 

Harris, W. T., 87, 209, 346, 362 

Hartlib, 289 

Hartwell, E. M., 256 

Harvard University, 270, 273, 331; 
entrance examinations, 232; in- 
come, 362 

Harvey, 285 

Hawthorne, 69 



INDEX 



383 



Hegel, 48, 49, 50, 166, 168, 191, 

300, 306, 307, 311, 326 
Heidelberg University, 261 
Helmholtz, 67 
Herbart, 83, 307, 308 
Herder, 40 

Higher education, 270 
History, study of, 244 
Hofmann, A. W., 278 
von Hoist, 262, 271 
Homer, 54, 155, 311 
Hooker, 284 
Horace, 240, 250 
Humanism, 59; and science, 60 
Humanities, 28, 40, 62 
Huss, John, 288 
Huxley, 67, 258 
Hyde, Wm. de W., 266 

Ibsen, 47 

Idea, the, 147 

Illiteracy, 352 

Individual, the, 33, 133, 144, 176, 

301 ; in educational theory, 305; 

and institutions of civilization, 

311 

Individualism, excesses of, 310; 

and evolution, 314; and institu- 

tionalism, 373 
Industry and education, 356 
Infancy, doctrine of, 5; meaning 

of, 13; lengthening period of, 

14, 21; and education, 18, 38; 

a factor in the development of 

the family, 19 
Institutional inheritance, 32-35; 

life, 76 
Institutionalism, 373 
Institutions of civilization, 311, 

373 
Interest, 83, 86 

James, William, 113 

Jansen, 46 

Johns Hopkins University, 270, 

273, 278 
Johnson, Samuel, 96, 99 
Jonson, Ben, 284 
Joule, 66 
Julian, Emperor, 283 

Kalamazoo case, 333 

Kant, 8, 49, 50, 67, 108, 209, 215, 

306, 311, 375 
Keats, 105 
Kempis, Thomas a., 57 



Kepler, Johann, 285 
Kindergarten, 165 
Kipling, 300 
Kultur, 39 

Lamarck, 49 

Lange, 66 

Language, correct use of, 103, 136, 

138; newspaper English, 140 
Languages, study of, 28, 155, 211, 

252 
Latin, study of, 248 
Law, schools of, 276 
Leibniz, 50, 52, 74, 89 
Leipsic University, 261 
Leisure, labor and, 119; use made 

of, 146 
Liberal education, 124 
Liberty, for the mind, no; and 

government, 326 
Life of mind, 5, 19; life-process, 

education part of the, 180; and 

the secondary school, 257 
Lincoln, 139, 300; his English, 308 
Literature, educational, 160, 361 
Lob ache vsky, 52 
Locke, 69, 206, 293 
Logical order, 313 
Luther, 285, 304 
Lycee, 231, 238 

Macaulay, 300 

Mandeville, 74 

Mann, Horace, reports, 361 

Manners, 107 

Manual training, 254 

Martineau, James, 191 

Massachusetts, statistics of crime 

and industry, 354 
Mathematics, study of, 152, 246 
Mayer, 66 

Medicine, schools of, 276 
Melanchthon, 103 
Michael Angelo, 54 
Michelet, 288 
Mill, J. S., 257 
Milton, 53, 61, 199, 289 
Mind, life of, 5; liberty for the, 

no; growth of, 170 
Missouri Supreme Court, opinion, 

335 
Modern world, 46; ideas, Come- 

nius, forerunner of, 292 
Montaigne, 47, 285, 293, 304 
Moral training, 32, 142, 367 
Mosso, 78 



3§4 



INDEX 



Mozart, 57 
Mulcaster, 103 
Munsterberg, 272 
Murillo, 58 

Napoleon, 300 

National Educational Association, 

361 
Natural sciences, study of, 247 
Nature-study, 25, 61, 155 
Newspaper English, 140 
Newton, 52, 67, 285, 295 
Nordau, 47 

Orton, Judge, 187 

Oxenstiern, 290 

Oxford training, 126 

Oxford University, 261, 263, 331 

■jcouSsfo, 40 

Parker, F. W., 85 

Pater, 59 

Paulsen, 92, 241, 260, 271, 277 

Perry, 359 

Pestalozzi, 293, 306 

Petrarch, 59 

Petronius, 191 

Phidias, 54, 311 

Philosophy, an educational, 3 ; and 
education, 7, 55; and life, 25; 
study of, no; Faculty of, the 
centre of the university, 278 

Physical environment, 22; train- 
ing, 77, 255 

Physiological aspect of education, 

77 
Plato, 25, 49, 50, 56, 206, 240, 

250, 311 
Play, 77 
Politics, 93 
Pre-Raphaelites, 47 
Preyer, 160 
Private schools and colleges, 332; 

aid to education, 362; schools, 

State interference, 348 
Programme of study, secondary 

school, 208, 237; overcrowded, 

217; college, 268 
Promotions, 156 
Protestantism, 183 
Psychological aspect of education, 

79; order, 313 

Rabelais, 285, 304 
Raphael, 54, 57, 67, 311 
Ratich (or Ratke), 286 



Rayleigh, 51 

Reading, importance of good, 128 

Reed, T. B., 161 

Reflection, habit of, 50, 108, 157 

Reflex actions, 17 

Reinhold, 306 

Religious inheritance, 35; instruc- 
tion and training, 177-200 

Renan, no 

Research and teaching, 272 

Ribiere, 188 

Riemann, 52 

Rockefeller, 300 

Rollin, 258 

Roman culture, 40; law, 311 

Rousseau, 32, 35, 56, 76, 209, 293, 
306, 310, 315 

Royal Commission on Secondary 
Education, 203, 206, 224 

Royce, 82 

Schelling, 61 

Schiller, 306 

Schopenhauer, 47 

Science, 65, 271; and humanism, 
60; one of the humanities, 62 

Scientific study of education, 6, 
75; inheritance, 26 

Secondary education, 89; extent 
of, 204; definition of, 205; pas- 
sage to, from elementary, 212; 
disciplinary functions of, 214; 
field of, 231; aim of, 236 

Secondary school and college, bar- 
rier between, 89; programme, 
208, 237; studies, character- 
istics of, 211; passage on to 
college, 216; and life, 257 

Secondary teachers, training, 235 

Secular schools, 188 

Self-culture, 124; mastery, 145; 
improvement, 146 

Selfishness versus standards, 142; 
distinguished from selfhood, 373 

Shakspere, 53, 57, 67, 155, 240, 284 

Shelley, 105 

Sigismund, Prince, 291 

Sociological aspect, 87 

Socrates, 33, 56, 67, 74, 109, 302 

Sophists, S3, 302 

Sophocles, 240, 250 

Spalding, Bishop. 113 

Specialization, danger of, 280 

Speech, bad habits of, 138 

Spencer, Herbert, 48, 49, 56, 223, 
309 



INDEX 



38S 



Spenser, Edmund, 284 

Spinoza, 49 

Spirit, knowledge of the things of 
the, 57 

Spiritual environment, 22; in- 
heritance, 24, 102; growth, 69 

Standards, of value in knowledge, 
56; the setting of, 134, 141; of 
personal conduct, 136; versus 
selfishness, 142; low, of pro- 
fessional and technical schools, 
276 

State, and the church, 36; and 
government, 328; and educa- 
tion, 347; the ideal, 377 

Statistics, 204, 262, 267, 316, 331, 
349-364 

Stoics, 302 

Sturm, 59, 285 

Sunday-school, 194 

Sylvester, 52 

System, too rigid, a cause of waste, 
151; for the child, 156 



Tacitus, 250 

Tax-supported education, 325; 
scope of, 332; a public service, 
336; Daniel Webster's opinion 
of, 338 

Teachers, limitations of experi- 
ence, 80; attitude toward the 
scientific study of education, 
94; incompetent, 158; better 
training, 235; in American uni- 
versities, 272 

Technical school in the university, 
2 73 

Tennyson, 240 

Thirty Years' War, 288 

Thoroughness, the fetish of, 157 



Thought, primacy of, 50, 54, 108, 

i57. 
Tolstoi, 47 
Tyndall, 66 

University and college, distinction 
between, 261; definition of, 265, 
360; unity of, 277 

Urbanitas, 40 

Utilities, the higher, 65 

Utility in education, 64 

Vacations, 234 

Verner, 54; laws, 94 

da Vinci, Leonardo, 57 

Virchow, 273 

Virgil, 73, 240 

Vives, 286 

Vocational training, 1 19-129, 254; 
should follow elementary, 122; 
special schools, 123; prepara- 
tion, 125 

Wallace, A. R., 14 

Warner, Francis, 78, 160 

Waste in education, 151, 223 

Webster, Daniel, 318, 355; on tax- 
ation for public instruction, 338 

Western States, education in the, 
79 

Whewell, 56, 66 

White, R. G., 106 

Wieland, 306 

Will, 5, So, 68 

William, German Emperor, 103 

Wisconsin Supreme Court on sec- 
tarian instruction, 186 

Wordsworth, 308 

Wundt, 55 

Zola, 47 



